The American Bar Association’s Coming Free-Speech Intervention. The liberal ABA may save law schools from themselves.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | January 17, 2024 | Mark Pulliam

[karpov]

Higher education did not have a good year in 2023, as evidenced by high-profile resignations at Penn (Liz Magill) and Harvard (Claudine Gay). This followed abysmal televised congressional testimony in which the two Ivy League presidents and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth refused to condemn campus calls for genocide against Jews. Harvard’s disgrace was compounded by revelations of serial plagiarism on the part of Gay.

The legal academy has fared no better in recent years, with highly publicized incidents of intolerance, de facto censorship, and speech suppression at Stanford Law (e.g., students heckling Fifth Circuit judge Kyle Duncan), Yale Law (e.g., disruption by students of an event featuring Alliance Defending Freedom general counsel Kristen Waggoner and administration harassment of a Federalist Society member for promoting a Constitution Day event), Georgetown Law (e.g., the suspension of lecturer Ilya Shapiro for a tweet criticizing President Biden’s selection of Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court), and Penn Law (e.g., disciplining tenured faculty member Amy Wax for making unpopular statements).

Some federal judges, including Fifth Circuit judge James Ho and Eleventh Circuit judge Elizabeth Branch, have indicated that they will stop hiring law clerks from offending schools until these repressive campus cultures are fixed. Some law firms have withdrawn job offers from anti-Semitic students who, emboldened by a campus climate imbued with cultural Marxism, have harassed or threatened Jewish (or pro-Israel) students based on their perceived status as “oppressors” or “colonizers.” The shocking display of pro-genocidal sentiment at many colleges and law schools has unmasked the toxic core of “intersectionality,” prompting America’s largest law firms to issue an unprecedented joint letter to top law schools warning them that the firms will not hire graduates who engage in “discrimination or harassment” against Jewish students.

[McGavin999]

It’s about time. I thought the Bar was gone along with all the other institutions we used to revere

[jimtorr]

I think the bar is gone, with lately the schools and students are attacking the very identity of too many high-placed attorneys.

[McGavin999]

Between that and allowing the DOJ to get away with eliminating client attorney privilege. They should have been screaming from the rooftops.