Stanford President and Law-School Dean Apologize to Judge Duncan | Hacker News Reader

Stanford President and Law-School Dean Apologize to Judge Duncan

nationalreview.com

77 pointsfortran7780 comments

Members of the bar have professional responsibilities which require them, in certain circumstances, to maintain decorum in the face of people and situations they find distasteful. They even can be assigned as counsel to defendants they consider immoral and in that case must provide zealous representation.

If an incident during law school provides indications that a student might not be capable of controlling his or her feelings enough to carry out professional responsibilities, details of these incidents should be reported to the character and fitness committees of any bar those students apply to be admitted to.

Do they have to maintain decorum all the time or just when they are on professional duty? In any case, I suspect those students were in perfect control of their feelings and very intentionally seeking to call out and disrupt the speaker.

Only certain times and places, just as apparently Stanford’s rules only require decorum in certain times and places. An inability or unwillingness to abide by those restrictions is useful evidence for likely future behavior and should be considered by character and fitness committees.

> perfect control of their feeling

The administrators voice cracked at least twice… My interpretation of that is she was about to cry… At least twice. Perfect control would mean no loss of vocal control by her, wouldn’t it?

I think you can feel and show emotion and still be very in control of your words and actions. Certainly looked like the administrator was acting very intentionally and in accordance with their values.

Is this referring to the Judge shouting "you are an appalling idiot" over and over at a student?

In response to the student calling him disgusting, all after 20 minutes of nonstop heckling.

(That said, yeah, he should have responded to the insults with more patience and composure.)

I did not see any video where he responded at all, except the “you are an appalling idiot” spoken with composure. Are there others I can watch?

I don’t believe federal judges are allowed to practice and so have no need to be admitted to any bar.

I saw the video of him calmly saying "you are an appalling idiot" twice to a student after the student said what he's doing is disgusting (thrice) [1]. Is there a video of him shouting it?

[1] https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1634791941350064128

Of course not. The activist to whom you are replying is using one of his tactics, "lies and distraction" in order to hook people who may not take the time to watch the video.

This was written by the "Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies" at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is a think thank that describes itself thusly:

> Founded in 1976, the Ethics and Public Policy Center is Washington, D.C.’s premier institute working to apply the riches of the Judeo-Christian tradition to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics, in pursuit of America’s continued civic and cultural renewal.

I have no doubt that a Stanford "DEI dean" would pull something like this but is there perhaps a less biased third party analysis of what happened? The above sounds like a culture war machine

There's a video available:

https://vimeo.com/806801455/16c79baa14

Obviously even video can leave things out, but six uninterrupted minutes doesn't let you leave out that much context. And as far as I know, no one is disputing the facts of the events, just whether it's appropriate to heckle a judge of opposite partisan valence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35122190

I’ve been out of medical school for 6 years now, so I’m not that far removed from higher education. Stanford law is apparently very low quality if this is what kind of “professional” it produces.

The administrator kept asking “is the juice worth the squeeze?” Well no, not at all. These students are disgusting.

https://vimeo.com/806801455/16c79baa14

My reading of that question was different. She was asking if the free speech juice was with the squeeze. She was proud of what the students were doing and was not questioning them or their actions at all.

We have the same reading, I was answering for Duncan rather than the students. It wasn’t worth his effort to continue imo.

These are future lawyers - they should have come armed with facts and performed an eloquent take down if they disagreed. Instead it’s just childish, disruptive, and completely unprofessional whining condoned by the administrator.

Continued use of the word “safe” and “safety” was strange. What about his appearance was unsafe? Can’t you leave the room if you feel unsafe?

I think he continued precisely because he sees them as future lawyers. If you cannot engage people with such aspirations, we are doomed as a society.

She should know the answer to that. Free speech is the price of a free society. It also means you have to be ready to offer a defense of what you believe with more speech.

This goes doubly so for lawyers whose tools are words. That we're cultivating a generation of people ruled by their emotions rather than their reason is a cause for great concern.

> The administrator kept asking “is the juice worth the squeeze?” Well no, not at all.

If you answer 'no', then they move on to the next thing, and ask again.

If we are judging Stanford by the kind and quality of its graduate effluent, it’s clear that the institution should be red-tagged immediately. Unfortunately as a society we have no collective defenses against toxic private organizations.

As Warren Buffet puts it, "[i]t takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minuted to ruin it. If you think about that you'll do things differently."

As more and more hiring managers put Stanford resumes in the recycle bin, I suspect a confluence of decreasing applicants and pressure from alumni and donors will force Stanford to drastically change its policies.

Why would any hiring manager take a chance on a Stanford grad when there are no clear upsides and virtually infinite downsides?

The same law school dean Martinez wants to abandon LSAT in law school admissions. I am fine with abandoning LSAT/SAT/MCAT scores, GPAs, etc. Now you are replacing one thing with a worse one.

It appears that Dean Jenny Martinez (another DEI warrior) was forced by Stanford U President to apologize.

As people such as Martinez fill Stanford and rise through its ranks, each subsequent president becomes more likely to endorse such actions, instead of demanding apologies for them.

The school's conservative newspaper is calling for the firing of the law school DEI dean who took the podium at the event: https://stanfordreview.org/fire-tirien-steinbach/

I mean regardless of what you think of the whole situation, this is a rain is wet story, no?

I can’t imagine a DEI dean the Stanford Review would be a fan of.

I imagine they were not fans of hers before this incident, but they weren't calling for her to be fired.

I thought it would be valuable to include this link since the original National Review article didn't have much background, and honestly I didn't understand what had happened until reading several other articles about the situation.

I don't think the administration, certainly Martinez, is sorry that it happened, they're only sorry that it happened to a sitting federal court judge who can exert an absolutely detrimental effect on their students, and law program.

IMHO, a person who is invited to speak, who is then shouted down by woke activists, is a victim of the worst kind of fascism. It astounds me that the solution to disagreement in this country is to silence the person with whom you disagree with.

> is a victim of the worst kind of fascism

In what way is this remotely fascism?

Driveby throwaways should be banned from HN for polluting the discourse like this.

It's good there's been a formal apology, however there's no clear corrective action outlined yet. It's simply unacceptable this kind of behavior was permitted toward an invited guest at one of the country's top law schools. The justice system that protects all of us is based on adversarial viewpoints being heard.

If a student doesn't want to hear what a speaker has to say they shouldn't attend. Seizing the power to unilaterally censor a viewpoint by shouting it down is not only arrogant, it prevents any rational criticism. I may not agree with the speaker's viewpoint but how can I even understand it if we're prevented from hearing it explained in his own words.

Where is the full video? The only one I've been able to find is this junky re-encoded, reframed trash:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xs3rELqpaEI

I'm curious what Judge Duncan followed up with after such a strange and harsh "introduction".

Duncan may or may not be a terrible person, I'm not familiar enough to have an informed opinion. Setting the politics and moral issues aside for a moment, the way he was scolded at the beginning was disrespectful, especially to an invited guest speaker. It came off like an episode of Jerry Springer rather than a speech in a Stanford lecture hall.

There's really no reason to recommend Standford these days. Time after time, from their involvement in Theranos to this lastest incident, they show themselves to be incompetent and foolish.

Is here someone familiar with the situation?

Can you explain what the students and DEI dean are upset about? What did Duncan do to deserve the treatment he received?

The invited speaker was Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, whom, according to Wikipedia, has "a history of anti-LGBT activism" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Duncan_(judge)#Opposition... . It seems Judge Duncan was invited by the students from the Federalist Society to speak at Stanford Law (see https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/11/law-school-activists-pr... for more context).

Thank you :)

He disagreed with them.

If the Wikipedia is right, he apparently wanted to prevent them from forming families - that'll make some enemies. "...While he was a judge on the Fifth Circuit, Duncan refused to identify a transgender defendant by their assumed name..." shows the heckling isn't exactly disccordant with his conduct as a judge.

I’m sure his politics don’t align with everyone’s, especially Stanford students. But if you invite a judge to give a lecture to a bunch of law students and they disagree - there’s a much better way to show the disagreement.

They disagreed, and the event obviously didn't do anyone any favors. The students aren't mad that he solely had a difference of opinion.

Edit: it isn't a simple disagreement that has no effect on the legal environment

Yea, it’s a bit of a ‘convergence of the twain’.

Ideally, I would want my law students to behave differently in an adversarial scenario. To show they can have wildly opposing viewpoints and act professionally. To take down their ideological enemy while maintaining decorum. To actually be morally superior and correctly self-righteous. Should they have had a discussion of that prior to this collision? Probably.

Ideally, definitely. In my local university, a similar situation occurred, and while the students didn't attend the lecture, they ridiculed him relentlessly on the way back to his vehicle. Behavior spreads and I think that type of thing has a frustrating idiocy. I think it just trains the dumber systems in your brain. The idea that the students had nothing to empathize with or understand is frustrating too however, and seems to be the implication in some of the discussion. The environment has primed everyone in that Stanford class to act that way, it is pretty sad.

The hilarious thing about this is that Stanford is known within the legal community for being one of the most conservative law schools.

It seems that what passes for modern "conservatism" on the bench these days is too extreme even for the likes of Stanford.

Really? I never got this sense at all, and I worked in biglaw in SV for the better part of a decade. We recruited from SLS, and none of those students were remotely conservative. As I think back on them, they were among the most progressive young lawyers that I knew.

I'm curious to know what influenced your opinion that SLS is on the conservative side (even within the legal academy, which is generally quite progressive).

Every one of the dozens of lawyers I've met from Stanford Law (here in LA, prior to COVID) has been a member of the far-right Federalist Society, and Stanford Law works closely with the far-right Hoover Institution think tank. Trump's and the RNC's legal team at Jones Day was also heavy with Stanford Law graduates during Trump's term.

I get the sense that the ones staying in a liberal area like the Bay Area are most likely to be the progressive ones. LA is less progressive and has a significantly larger conservative population than the Bay Area (by absolute numbers, LA is one of the most conservative metropolitan areas in the U.S.; roughly 40ish% of the 13 million people in LA, or about 5.2 million are registered Republicans, which is why Republicans constantly make trips to LA to raise money)

Interesting! I actually started my legal career in LA (went to UCLAW and interned there), but didn't bump into any SLS grads during my time in the area. I didn't realize that LA is that conservative — I thought LA was pretty liberal, but OC was more conservative. I'm going to have to look into this further, now that you've piqued my curiosity!

This seems like a better article which explains the context: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/12/president-law-school-de...

TLDR from the article: Stanford President and Law School Dean issue an apology to Judge Duncan who was invited to speak on campus by the Federalist Society — an SLS (Stanford Law School) student group — for a speech on “Guns, COVID and Twitter.” [0] In fliers put up in advance of the event, protesters called Duncan a right-wing advocate for laws that would harm women, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people [1]. SLS Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach stepped in less than 30 minutes into his speech after Duncan repeatedly asked for an administrator to help control the audience. Steinbach gave a short speech of her own after Duncan asked for an administrator to come out where she asked Duncan if “the juice was worth the squeeze,” seeming to imply whether Duncan believed his messages were worth the resulting reactions [2]. While leaving the event early due to the disruptions, Duncan said to a protester, “You’re an appalling idiot.” [3] Many have taken offense at Steinbach’s intervention, with some even calling for her firing. The Stanford Review wrote in an article on Saturday, “If Stanford cares about free speech, it must fire any administrator who actively encourages these unruly actions against it.” [4]

0. https://eppc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/letter-from-Stan...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Duncan_(judge)#Opposition...

2. https://vimeo.com/806801455/16c79baa14

3. https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1634791941350064128

4. https://stanfordreview.org/fire-tirien-steinbach/

> Steinbach gave a short speech of her own

She refers to having prepared remarks/written notes because she was nervous. Seems interesting that she prepared a speech to give at someone else's invited talk — almost as if she coordinated with the protestors to allow her to take the podium.

Stanford also likes to attack judges who issue fair sentences (and in accordance to guidelines) 19 year old men who are victimized by 23 year old non-student women who come on to campus to ply freshmen athletes with alcohol and try to pick them up.

In fact, they'll put up a monument to the 23-year-old victimizer!

This is a rotten school. Don't hire Stanford grads.

The proposal that "the juice isn't worth the squeeze" in this case is so disingenuous: the idea is that the division his presence is causing in the school may be an argument for not letting him speak at all. But that argument is offered by people who don't want him to be there in the first place. So, on the one hand they are protesting him, and on the other they're saying "gosh, is it even worth it if it's causing these protests?" In other words, they are using their own choices as evidence of a cause and effect relationship they lay at the feat of a third party.

Weird. Does anybody else remember that one time where the right was united around the idea that loud and disruptive protests were the pinnacle of free speech?

No.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest

It's not particularly illuminating to talk about "the right" and "the left" as if they were monolithic groups. Canadian truckers and U.S. judges don't have a great deal in common.

I mean, doesn't it seem silly to say: "Canadian truckers were loud and disruptive when protesting pandemic vaccine mandates, therefore there are no grounds for a U.S. judge who dislikes same-sex marriage to complain about a Stanford law school dean disrupting his talk?"

Two wrongs do not make a right.

Oh, I didn't say right or wrong. Just noticing bias in biased media.

Surely we can agree that a protest out on the streets, or inside a lecture hall, differ. And for outdoors, "loud and disruptive" is the norm. There the line is usually drawn at violence.

Douchey students heckle douchey judge. Nothing productive happens, and everybody tunes in to see who gets dunked on the hardest.

checks watch yep still 2023, I guess we’re not all tired of this yet.

This guy kinda sucks though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Duncan_(judge)

> Duncan is known for a history of anti-LGBT activism.[6][7][8] In 2015, Duncan argued before the Supreme Court against the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.[9] He has led efforts to defend state bans on same-sex marriage.[9] When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of marriage equality, Duncan described the decision as an "abject failure" that "imperils civic peace", and he argued that the decision "raises a question about the legitimacy of the court."[9]

Really? You think the Supreme Court is illegitimate because of its ruling on gay marriage?

Sure. But the students have managed to make the story "rowdy crowd of woke crybabies heckle a sitting judge" instead of "sitting judge embarrasses himself by giving bad answers to student questions."

That's not good for advancing or protecting LGBT rights.

Activists discourage or disapprove of participating in debateing because they believe it could provide a platform or legitimacy for opposing views. They also think other people are delusional, using wrong concepts or lacking the unique perspective they have, so there is no way they could understand. It's a despicable move, it kills dialogue, separates people into little churches, and encourages dogmatic communication. They are trying to convince society that we have more reasons to fight than to cooperate between groups, which is not true.

I'm LGBT myself and have done plenty of (actual, on-the-ground) progressive activism and organizing. Not all activists act like this, and they bring disrepute to the cause.

> provide a platform or legitimacy

The dumber the stance, the easier it is to demonstrate it as such.

The people behind "deplatforming" are merely trying to protect their own dumb stances from intellectual scrutiny. Remember the church and e pur si muove? Same exact thing.

Many would agree, but it's not relevant to the free speech debate

It's the same logic as those who made the "this guy kinda sucks though" argument based on George Floyd's criminal history to deflect from what the issue really was about - policing practices.

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