Following the lead set by NFL players last Sunday, Georgetown University law professors plan to protest Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ speech on Tuesday by “taking a knee” outside the school’s chapel.
Sessions is slated to deliver an address about free speech on college campuses to Georgetown Law’s Center for the Constitution at noon. A source close to the attorney general told Jonathan Swan of Axios that Sessions will say universities are “transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought.”
Though they acknowledged his right to be invited, more than 30 members of the law school’s faculty issued a statement to “condemn the hypocrisy of Attorney General Sessions speaking about free speech,” citing the president’s recent statement on NFL players, the prosecution of a woman who disrupted Sessions’ confirmation hearing, and the DOJ seeking a warrant for information about online Trump Inauguration protesters.
“Adhering to the First Amendment requires more than rhetoric,” the professors wrote.
Referring to Sessions as a “fascist,” one student group called the Georgetown Young Democratic Socialists of America revealed its plans on Facebook to “ask disruptive questions during Q and A and try and shut him down.” Protests will likely be restricted to outside the venue as the guest list appears to be invite-only, contained to students who previously signed up to attend the Center’s events and student’s in the moderating professor’s classes.
A Georgetown attendee told the Washington Post that some students “find it extraordinarily hypocritical that AG Sessions would lecture future attorneys about the importance of free speech on campus while actively excluding the wider student body.”
But in all likelihood if “the wider student body,” was permitted entry, Sessions would not be able to finish a sentence. Look no further than the Young Democratic Socialists’ stated plans to “shut him down” as proof. It would be great if the well-meaning students who disagree with Sessions had the ability to hear his remarks and engage in a question-and-answer session, but for high-profile right-of-center politicians venturing onto college campuses these days, that’s usually not possible.
The students should not fault either Sessions or the university for restricting the guest list, but their peers who would prevent the attorney general from even speaking at all for necessitating those measures.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
