Students don’t try to engage and learn from one another. They engage in disruption, intimidation, and public shaming. They try to terrorize people into submission and self-censorship, in a deliberate campaign to eradicate certain viewpoints from the public discourse.
And they’re doing it to accomplished litigators, legal scholars, even federal judges. Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, as well as the Fifth Circuit, have been disrupted while trying to speak on campus.
Now, I have zero concern about judges being criticized. Thank goodness we live in a country where people are free. So judges should expect to be criticized. And we shouldn’t sweat it. People should become judges for public service, not public applause.
My concern is how law students are treating everyone else they disagree with. I’m concerned about what this is doing to the legal profession—and to our country.
Students learn all the wrong lessons. They practice all the wrong tactics. And then they graduate and bring these tactics to workplaces across the country. What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. And it’s tearing our country apart.