#WTH: Wokeness in law schools
The DEI epidemic, with Ilya Shapiro
Three things from our pod with Ilya Shapiro this week:
This isn’t about sophomoric riots in college. These are the elites of the legal profession — future lawyers, judges, justices, professors, Members of Congress, and presidents.
Lost in all of the hyperbole is the fundamental assault on the rule of law in America. Governors, judges, prosecutors, and police who aren’t enforcing the law as written. This is the road to mob rule.
Diversity is good. Equality is good (equity is not). Inclusion is lovely. DEI does not represent most of these values in their true form.
Ilya Shapiro’s name was a household word for a few months after Georgetown University sought to drum him out for criticizing the nomination of now-Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. They eventually parted ways, but the pseudo-scandal left an indelible mark. Free speech is no longer a valued element of law school life.
Earlier this year, in a similarly disturbing story, Judge Kyle Duncan (Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals) was invited by Stanford Law School’s Federalist Society chapter to give a talk. The event made history, as Judge Duncan was verbally assaulted, physically threatened, and finally denounced by the school’s Dean for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” Ultimately, Judge Duncan received an apology from the law school dean (for which she was roundly pilloried by her students). But the entire tale presents the question: Where has respect for the rule of law gone? What are students being taught in our best law schools? Are these really our future leaders? Really?
Check out the DEI stats, from some of our AEI colleagues’ fine research:
Analysis of information on DEI personnel at 65 universities representing 16 percent of all students in four-year institutions in the USA
Average university sampled listed more than 45 people as having formal responsibility for promoting DEI goals
DEI staff listed by univs totaled 4.2 times the number of staff who assist students with disabilities in receiving accommodations
DEI staff levels were 1.4 times larger than the number of professors in corresponding history departments
Average university had 3.4 people working to promote DEI for every 100 tenured or tenure-track faculty members
o University of Michigan: 163 people identified as having formal DEI responsibility
o UNC Chapel Hill: 13.3 times as many people devoted to promoting DEI as providing services to people w/ disabilities
o Georgia Tech: 3.2 times as many DEI staff people as history professors
o University of Louisville: Ratio of DEI personnel to history faculty was 2.9
o University of Virginia: 6.5 DEI staff for every 100 professors
This is crazy stuff. Is it any wonder, given these events, given these stats, that Gen Z believes the Constitution is a net negative? That America is a dystopia? That the Bill of Rights is wrong?
HIGHLIGHTS
Are you worried about the growing intolerance at our nation’s best law schools?
IS: Well, especially at elite law schools like Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, where you hear lots of news periodically, not just once, but it's a pattern, it's a trend of illiberal behavior by both students, administrators, faculty, where these are our future leaders. I mean, lawyers are disproportionately represented in Congress, in state legislatures, let alone obviously the Supreme Court, courts generally. The guardians of our legal and political institutions are lawyers, and these are the law students now at these places 20 years from now are going to be controlling the levers of the commanding heights of these institutions, that calls for some worry.
At Stanford, the Associate Dean for DEI confronted a conservative judge — an invited guest — rather than the demonstrators threatening him, and asked him, “is the juice worth the squeeze.” What did she mean?
IS: Here the argument really coming from that side, from the radical left or the illiberal left as I like to call it, is that certain views are too dangerous even to be worth listening to. They're not worth listening to. The Overton window, the permissible range of permitted policy views has shifted and narrowed to such an extent that what we consider to be mainstream conservative views are an anathema, are unacceptable, cannot be raised... And here's where not just ideological but therapeutic language comes in. It creates harm, there's an issue of safety, there are triggers relating to traumatic stress disorder, all of these weird psychological tropes that get imported as justification for excluding, here's where the DEI comes in, rather than including, for excluding anyone who's beyond that very narrow and rabid left perspective.
If this were college, we’d chalk it up to immature sophomores. But at a law school?
IS: This is the paramount reason why it's so dangerous that this is indeed going on in law school, that the cancer has spread, as it were, has metastasized these... You're right, lawyers are officers of the court. They're there to preserve the rules of the game, the American constitutional order, such foundational should-be-non-controversial ideals as due process, freedom of speech, equal protection of the laws, all of these very basic things without which it's simply survival of the fittest or might makes right or something like that. What these illiberal radicals are militating for is ruled by the mob.
Isn’t this the beginning of “optional” law enforcement? Prosecutors not prosecuting? Police not arresting? Judges ignoring the rule of law?
IS: Yes, in a word… like Ron Wyden, Senator from Oregon, who advised the Biden administration to ignore the federal judges' ruling against the abortion medication, there might be problems with that ruling. I see some weaknesses, but rather than going through the process where they're arguing for ignoring judicial rulings. I mean, lawlessness quite literally. And this is coming from lawyers, that's right, because they think that they're the holders of the keys to the temple, as it were, those being the right ideas. And some things just are too important to abide by these rules, which after all were set up by the white supremacist patriarchy, et cetera, et cetera
Where does this all lead?
IS: This is why this is such a worrying trend, which perhaps I had realized but until I myself was in the star chamber with Georgetown a year ago, having that lived experience, I hadn't fully appreciated I think, and, plus, the tensions have increased ever since. This leads to tribalism. It's mob rule. It's putting Socrates to death. This is really worrisome. This is not the decades old conservative complaint about liberals taking over the faculty lounge, going back to Berkeley in the '60s, or what have you. This is illiberals. This is those who do not cotton on to the rules of the game, who think that the be all and end all, the great truths as they see them, there cannot be any discussion about that. And if you disagree, then all bets are off. You're an outlaw.
Your experience at Georgetown is staggering. It’s as if we are living in Saddam Hussein’s Republic of Fear…?
IS: Dany, the closest parallel I've seen [is] the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where you have struggle sessions to renounce your privilege and recognize your anti-racism or your eternal racism or what have you and the throwing out of the olds, the old values, in this case, the classical liberal values of due process and free speech, et cetera, and even equal protection or equal opportunity in favor of equality of outcome, throwing out actual diversity in favor of just different colored people who all think the same way. That's why this is so scary
What’s the state of the legal profession even before these elite grads are unleashed? What are we seeing?
IS: [L]aw firms feeling pressured to put out statements at any significant political development, whether it's the election of Donald Trump or the George Floyd murder and subsequent riots, or the Dobbs ruling. And there was another case where during an all-woman safe space teleconference, a retired partner at Hogan Lovells, another mega firm, expressed some mildly pro-life views and was fired, separated from the firm for that. So, absolutely, at least anything other than dollars and cents, I guess all these big firms represent Exxon and tobacco manufacturers, as long as you're not going after their bread and butter in that respect, you're okay.
So what do you propose to do about the problem? You have a piece out.
IS: This is model legislation that proposes to uproot and abolish these DEI bureaucracies altogether, at least with respect to public universities. State legislatures have some kind of control. It might differ state to state over public institutions of higher ed, and this is separate from dictating what is taught, or what's on the curriculum, or who can say what in the classroom. There are separate issues including First Amendment issues with that. This is simply about how it's governed, and the bureaucracy around it, and certain structures and processes that are outside beyond the instructional level. And so our four piece proposal, after illustrating what we've just been discussing, what the problem is, is to get rid of these bureaucracies, which are a net negative to universities more broadly, not just at law schools
The explosion of these DEI offices, which is fairly recent, maybe in the last five years or so, is when you start seeing vice presidents, vice provost, vice deans of DEI sprouting up all over the place with huge staffs. So just abolish those offices altogether.
Getting rid of preferences for immutable characteristics, not just race, but all sorts of immutable characteristics for either admissions or hiring, regardless of what the Supreme Court does in a couple of months with the Harvard and UNC affirmative action challenges. This would be broader than that. And getting rid of mandatory trainings about implicit bias and microaggressions, and all of these therapeutic post-modern critical legal studies terms that really aren't...
For all the rest, check out the transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Here is a video of the recent Stanford Law DEI protest (made news)
Amicus Brief: College of the Ozarks v. Biden (Manhattan Institute, March 30 2023)
Princeton’s Shame — and Ours (Ilya Shapiro, National Review, May 27 2022)
Why I Quit Georgetown (WSJ, June 6 2022)
With some of my fellow Stanford Law students, there’s no room for argument (Washington Post, April 3 2023)
Citing concern for free speech, 12 Federal Judges say they won’t take clerks from Yale Law school (Free Beacon, October 4 2022)
DEI at Law Schools Could Bring Down America (Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, March 28 2023)
Abolish DEI Bureaucracies and Restore Colorblind Equality in Public Universities (Ilya Shapiro, Matt Beienburg, Christopher Rufo, Manhattan Institute, January 18 2023)
An AEI report in 2021 found that 19% of postings on leading university job boards require diversity statements
Other Than Merit: The Prevalence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statements in University Hiring (Robert Maranto and James D. Paul, AEI, November 8 2021)
· Visual Graphic to explore DEI personnel levels at Power Five Universities
Why are colleges offering up more DEI degrees? Demand for diversity experience is growing. (USA Today, FEB 8 2023)
Failing grade: What is DEI and how has it spread across college campuses? (Washington Examiner, January 16 2023)
· LinkedIn ranked DEI Manager as the second-fasted growing job over the past 5 years
· The University of Southern California's school of social work recently banned the word "field" from curricula, citing its commitment to using "inclusive language."
· Boston University's School of Medicine vowed to build an "antiracism curriculum" and said that "providing an education that is focused on health equity and actively antiracist is essential."
· In November, Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) released a report saying all 101 medical schools in their survey had implemented diversity initiatives in their admissions practices
REPORT: Freshman orientation materials dominated by DEI agenda (Campus Reform, August 19 2022)
To make college more affordable, reject DEI (The Washington Examiner, January 17 2023)
Bill to track DEI costs at Va. colleges is struck down (Richmond, January 17 2023)
State University System of Florida Reports $34.5M in DEI Spending (Best Colleges, JAN 27 2023)
Joe Biden Is the Brezhnev of DEI (National Review, FEB 10 2023)
Analysis: The Destructive Power Of ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ Doesn’t Stop At Higher Education (Legal Insurrection, JAN 10 2023)
This tweet thread includes a chart from AEI’s Carpe Diem program ranking Ohio State’s DEI bureaucrats by salary
Stanford Faculty Say Anonymous Student Bias Reports Threaten Free Speech (Wall Street Journal, FEB 23 2023)
Education Department Blasts ‘Culture of Censorship’ at Colleges, Sets Up Free-Speech Email Hotline to Report Violations(Wall Street Journal, DEC 8 2020)
At Georgetown, a push for stronger university response to hate (Washington Post, FEB 20 2023)