“it’s time to strike fear into the hearts of free-speech opponents” – Yale Law School Edition

David Lat:

Not confronting the protesters on March 10 was, I submit, a failure of leadership—but it might have been understandable, in the heat of the moment and the chaos of the situation. A less understandable failure of leadership is not sending out a school-wide email after things calmed down, like the one that Dean David Faigman sent out after a similar event at UC Hastings Law, offering a ringing affirmation of free speech and explaining how the protesters violated university free-speech policies. It’s now more than a week after the event—by the time YLS students return from spring break, more than two weeks after the event—and you have not said anything publicly, despite ample opportunity to do so.

We don’t know each other super-well, so I apologize if this next part is overly familiar, but I think we share something in common: we both want to be liked. This is a common trait, and it’s not always a problem, but it can be when one is a leader or manager. (This is why I’m much happier as a one-man band here at Original Jurisdiction, instead of running Above the Law; I don’t enjoy managing, and my desire to be liked prevents me from doing it as well as I should.)

As the Dean of Yale Law School, you can’t be liked by all people, all of the time. You can be liked by most people, most of the time—and you are—but sometimes you have to anger people, if that’s the price of doing the right thing. And right now, the right thing to do is to make clear to the entire YLS community, liberals and conservatives alike, that they must comply with Yale’s free-speech policies—whether they like it or not.2

There’s been a problem with the intellectual climate at Yale Law School for several years now. Some of it flows from the fact that progressive students (“Progressives”) view those who disagree with them—definitely conservatives, and even some moderates—as bad people (“Bad People”).

Progressives are free to think that their opponents are Bad People. They can exclude them from social gatherings. They can make Bad People feel unwelcome in affinity groups (already happening at YLS, with members of certain affinity groups being forced to choose between affinity-group and FedSoc membership). They can make fun of Bad People with satirical fliers.3

But it’s your job, as the Dean of Yale Law School, to tell Progressives that in an academic community based on free expression, there are limits to how much they can act on the view that their opponents are Bad People.4 Progressives can’t shut down duly organized events because they disagree with the speakers. They can’t weaponize anti-discrimination policies to punish the protected speech of their opponents. They can’t make up and spread liesabout professors with unpopular views (or the students who dare to associate with those professors). It’s your job, as the Dean of Yale Law School, to remind Progressives of all this—even if they complain, call you “complicit,” or say you’re a Bad Person too.