Posted on 04/02/2022 4:17:07 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
The Yale Law School professor who attempted to keep order as protesters disrupted a panel on free speech urged her colleagues in a Thursday letter to recognize the disruption as a "blatant violation of Yale’s Free Expression policy," a statement that contradicts conclusions reached by the law school's dean.
"This is an important moment," Professor Kate Stith said in a memo to all tenured faculty at the law school. "Any formal determination that the March protest at Yale Law School did not violate Yale’s policy on Free Expression would set a terrible precedent at Yale and elsewhere."
The memo came three days after Heather Gerken, the dean of the law school, suggested that the students who attempted to drown out the panel and made speakers fear for their safety hadn’t violated Yale’s free speech policies.
"Had the protesters shut down the event, our course of action would have been straightforward—the offending students without question would have been subject to discipline," Gerken told the law school Monday. But "in accordance with the University’s free expression policy, which includes a three-warning protocol, those protesting exited the room after the first warning, and the event went forward."
Much of Stith’s memo reads like a blow-by-blow refutation of Gerken. "Yale’s Free Expression policy does not only prohibit disruption that successfully shuts down an event or class," Stith said. "Rather, Yale’s policy prohibits ‘disrupting' an event, including ‘interfer[ing] with speakers' ability to be heard and of community members to listen.’"
"Limiting Yale’s policy to prohibit only ‘shutting down' events would make no sense," she went on, because "whether to shut down an event depends on the speakers’ and audience members’ personalities, hearing abilities, and preferences as to which is worse—giving in and stopping the event, or continuing in hard-to-speak/hard-to-hear and uncomfortable circumstances."
Furthermore, Stith noted, the protest did succeed in shutting down two events: a faculty meeting that had to be moved to Zoom, and a nearby class that couldn’t continue due to noise from the protest.
"As a former prosecutor, I know well that not every violation has to be an occasion for sanctions," Stith concluded, calling the fracas an "opportunity" to educate students about free speech. "That said, we cannot make the most of this opportunity unless we recognize that a blatant violation of Yale’s Free Expression policy occurred on March 10."
Stith became the target of the roughly 120 student protesters after she asked them to "grow up."
At Yale disrupting the free speech of others is considered an act of free speech.
One voice crying our in the wilderness that is Yale today.
Then EVERY single participant in a disrupted event has a private right of action against the school for breach of contract.
The professor is clueless.
If we only had a wise Latina biologist to rule on the incident………
Harvard and Yale should be razed to bedrock and the earth salted afterwards.
L
The professor is not up-to-date with the woke policies of the universities and colleges and educational entities throughout the country.
Free speech is now hate speech, and only speech determined to be supportive of the woke agenda is allowed. Thus, the professor better find a new profession. The professor is of a by-gone era, where the constitution and bill-of-rights were the foundations of our national laws.
A new constitution is now upon us, and it’s called, the ‘woke agenda to guide the world’.
Like a broken record, I submit that Yale needs to fix New Haven before they emerge into public discourse again....
I’m sorry, but maybe it is time for the right, the conservatives and those that believe in “free expression” start disrupting the liberals and the opposition. Why do we who believe in free speech not treat others the way they treat us? It’s time to stand up and get on the bully pulpit and let the left get the treatment they give us!
“Harvard and Yale should be razed to bedrock and the earth salted afterwards.”
Thumbs up
“Harvard and Yale should be razed to bedrock and the earth salted afterwards.”
Liberals love taxes. Start levying heavy taxes on endowment funds for universities and private foundations such as the Clinton Foundation and Gates Foundations. Why should the income from these foundations be exempt from taxation and used to undermine our culture and civilization. Essentially by making them tax exempt we are underwriting our own destruction.
Rush taught us “We have the right to free speech, we have no right to be heard.”
Rush taught us “We have the right to free speech, we have no right to be heard.”
One big mistake the founders made was extending Constitutional protections to people who reject it. In the case of people who publicly reject the Constitution all such rights should be revoked.
America’s ruling class thought it would replicate itself with a new elite from the elite school who were unquestioningly and reliably new members of the elite who would protect and defend the ruling class power and money in exchange for a piece of the pie.
They got, instead, Jacobins and communists. And they haven’t even figured out yet that they will go to the guillotine as this new and terrifyingly lockstep generation of brownshirts takes power.
I invite people to imagine the school administrations reaction to a crowd of right-wingers disrupting a Leftist speaker’s event.
Did you read and comprehend the article?
Professor Stith is 100% correct and is one of the few at Yale that favors free speech.
Before I start ripping the skin off of your butt, go and read the article.
If you then want to engage, we can.
Ha HA! I come here mostly for the knee jerk reactions and the humor. Bravo! Read the article indeed! Start ripping. Ill applaud.
I meant that the professor doesn’t understand that there is no free speech at most universities anymore.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.