"Thus Do I Refute Him!"

You know, you can just not hire Yalies; you don’t have to make it a big thing https://t.co/gJ7aKWP5kU

— FullAndAccurateHat (@Popehat) September 29, 2022

With your own intolerance?

... Ho cited a number of high-profile examples of speakers being shouted down or otherwise censored at law schools across the country but singled out Yale Law as “one particular law school where cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency.”

Justice Alito, the calls are coming from inside the house again!

In February, in the wake of Georgetown Law’s suspension of Ilya Shapiro, the judge surprised the audience at a Federalist Society–organized event on Georgetown Law’s campus by giving a resounding defense of Shapiro during a speech that was initially intended to be about originalism. At the time, Ho acknowledged that he “was scheduled to talk” about originalism but said he’d “decided . . . to spend my time today talking about Ilya Shapiro.” In those remarks, which garnered significant public attention, Ho delivered blistering criticism of the campus attitudes that had led to Shapiro’s ouster, arguing that “cancel culture is not just antithetical to our constitutional culture and our American culture,” but “to the very legal system that each of you seeks to join,” and declared: “If Ilya Shapiro is deserving of cancellation, then you should go ahead and cancel me too.” 

In a nutshell, Ilya Shapiro is this guy:

On June 2, Shapiro was reinstated as senior lecturer and executive director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution after a 122-day investigation — which began before Shapiro started his first day on the job. Georgetown investigated Shapiro after he tweeted that Sri Srinivasan, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, would be President Biden’s “best pick” for the Supreme Court. He continued: “But alas [Srinivasan] doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.” Shapiro’s “lesser black woman” phrasing gained considerable attention on Twitter and within the Georgetown community, and led Georgetown Law Dean William Treanor to denounce the tweet as “appalling” and “at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law.”

But according to judge Ho, you have to suffer dicks when they are conservatives; or something. I dunno.  Shapiro was reinstated, but then he quit.  So I'm not sure how that fits into Judge Ho's example of "speakers being shouted down or censored at law schools across the country.  Apparently you're only supposed to object to obnoxious people quietly; or when you're a Judge on the 5th Circuit, where asking other judges to follow your lead is not "cancel culture" or "antithetical to our constitutional culture and our American culture," at all.

Funny how that works.

Nothing says fair and impartial like ruling out a whole class of people for employment.

— Jack Glaser (@JackGlaserPhD) September 29, 2022

This is actually funny:

But he also emphasized the need for substantive measures—above and beyond simply “speaking out”—to fight back.

“We’re not just citizens,” he said. “We’re also customers…I wonder how a law school would feel, if my fellow federal judges and I stopped being its customers.”

— Nate Hochman (@njhochman) September 29, 2022

The majority of "consumers" for Yale Law graduates are law firms and corporations, who probably don't give a wet snap about the "culture" of Yale, but only about the quality of its graduates.*  Yeah, it's a prize to work for a federal judge; but that's rather like winning the lottery than being the purpose for securing a law degree from Yale. And really, how many judges are going to decide to turn their backs on a whole class of law graduates because Ho is upset with the school they attended?

Of course, he preaches it round and square, as a retired judge once put it to me:

To those who’d say he’s hypocritical in condemning cancel culture while canceling Yale, he’d argue that cancel culture is about excluding, while he wants institutions of higher education to include more people—especially people with views outside liberal or progressive orthodoxy.

So he wants more people tolerant of his point of view, and less tolerance for people who don't hold his point of view?  How is this not hypocritical, again?

In concluding his remarks today, Judge Ho cited Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous essay, Live Not by Lies. The judge noted that Yale filed an amicus brief in Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 affirmative-action case, in which it told the Supreme Court that it wants “a diverse and inclusive educational experience, teaching students to view issues from multiple perspectives.” But according to Judge Ho, recent events at YLS have made clear that that was a lie.

“Any school that refuses to stand up against cancel culture—and instead caters to it, and even engages in it—is not a school that is interested in educational diversity,” Ho said. “And it’s not a school I want to have anything to do with.”

“I hope others will join me. But I will not live by the lie.”

Solzhenitsyn was a fine novelist, but otherwise a bit of a crank.  And "teaching students to view issues from multiple perspectives" is something I learned in seminary.  It was the hardest education of my life.  Judge Ho would hate it, since what he really wants is students who see things from his perspective.  If Yale students were shouting down liberal and progressive speakers, I wonder how upset he'd be?

And "cancel culture" is as much bullshit and empty of meaning as "originalism" is in the law.  To call yourself an originalist, as Ho does, is alread to "live by the lie."

I'm sorry if Yale law graduates get black-balled by this clown, but that's the risk you take if you go to Yale in order to get the clerkship in order to grab life's brass ring.  Nobody ever said it'd be fair. 

*The link below that paragraph points out that Yale is quite proud of its placement of law clerks.  May be it's time for Yale to reconsider marketing itself to such a singular and perhaps easily turned, market.  Once upon a time judges were not percieved as political creatures; but if they're going to act like it (hem-hem, Alito), then it might be in Yale's best interest to cultivate other markets.  Or place themselves at the mercy of a handful of federal judges for at least another generation (generations are lasting longer than 30 years these days).