Kerby Anderson

Students at Yale Law School launched a protest and disrupted speakers on a panel last month. Of course, we have seen this before. But what made this mob protest so ironic was the fact that the panel was put together to show how lawyers from different ends of the political spectrum could agree on issues like free speech. One panelist was Monica Miller, who is a secular progressive associated with the American Humanist Association. The other panelist was Kristen Waggoner, a conservative with Alliance Defending Freedom. She has been a guest on my radio program. The panel was an attempt to show that despite their political differences, these two women did agree about the importance of free speech. Apparently, the audience didn’t get the message because more than a hundred students heckled the panelists and tried to shout them down. I can’t even repeat some of the vile things they said mostly to Kristen Waggoner. And eventually, the speakers had to be escorted by the police from the event for their own safety. You might wonder how Yale University and the Yale Law School would respond to a political mob that broke up a rational discussion about the value of free speech. I am still wondering, since (as I write this) it doesn’t appear that any punishment will be forthcoming. That is why Judge Laurence Silberman (who serves on the DC Court of Appeals) decided to send a letter to his fellow judges. He suggests to these judges that any student involved in this disruption of the Yale Law School panel should be disqualified for potential clerkships. These “woke” law students might not care about the First Amendment, but I suspect they do care about their legal careers. These aren’t college freshmen, but law students. As we often say, if they won’t see the light, perhaps they will feel the heat.