The majority of the student body at Yale Law School condemned the presence of a conservative speaker and police on campus, drawing online ridicule days after over 100 students attempted to shout down the speaker.
An open letter, signed by over 400 students, blasted the law school for maintaining an armed police presence at a panel discussion on free speech hosted by the Federalist Society on civil rights law that featured an attorney from the conservative legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom. The police presence came amid a large group of protesters who attempted to shout down the event.
“Even with all of the privilege afforded to us at YLS, the decision to allow police officers in as a response to the protest put YLS’ queer student body at risk of harm,” the letter reads.
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Protesters at the event heckled and attempted to shout down Kristen Waggoner from the conservative ADF, who was speaking alongside Monica Miller of the American Humanist Association, a progressive atheist legal group, as part of a panel discussion on common ground between conservatives and liberals on freedom of speech issues. The Washington Free Beacon reported that the protesters numbered around 120.
At one point during the event as the protesting crowd continued to heckle the speakers, Yale law professor Kate Stith, who was moderating the event, told the crowd to “grow up.”
BEASTMODE: Yale Law professor Kate Stith tells protesting students to “grow up”
Full story from @aaronsibarium: https://t.co/JsTkQxynzL pic.twitter.com/81wGuKXk1C
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 16, 2022
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave or help you leave,” Stith reportedly told the crowd as they continued to shout at the panel.
Stith was also condemned in the letter signed by students, the Yale Daily News reported.
The protester’s actions garnered attention from conservative politicians and commentators, who pointed out that the protesting students represented the next generation of lawyers.
“Left-wing children at Yale are so fragile they can’t even tolerate a bipartisan panel on the First Amendment. Pathetic,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton wrote in a tweet.
Left-wing children at Yale are so fragile they can’t even tolerate a bipartisan panel on the First Amendment.
Pathetic.https://t.co/zp4rZNbmUQ
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) March 16, 2022
Princeton professor Robert George said the student’s behavior was “scandalous” and said “students- — at any law school — who grossly violate others’ free speech rights should be expelled.”
More scandalous behavior at Yale Law School. Law students–at any law school–who grossly violate others’ free speech rights should be expelled. The idea that those preventing others from speaking or listening were merely exercising their own free speech rights is laughable. https://t.co/9Gi7c6chN6
— Robert P. George????? (@McCormickProf) March 16, 2022
The protesters claimed that Waggoner worked for a hate group, a charge first leveled against ADF by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to the legal organization’s work defending people opposed to same-sex marriage and other gay and transgender issues.
ADF famously defended Colorado baker Jack Phillips after he refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. Phillips and ADF won the case in a 7-2 ruling from the Supreme Court in 2018.
In an email to the Yale Daily News, Waggoner noted that the students who heckled her event are “future lawyers” and “should have the critical thinking skills, intellectual curiosity, humility, and maturity to engage with ideas and legal principles that they may disagree with.”
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“Unfortunately, some students who attended the Federalist Society event refused to allow others to speak and acted in an aggressive and hostile manner towards me, Professor Kate Stith, and Monica Miller from the American Humanist Association,” Waggoner told the Yale student newspaper.
