Last updated on February 7th, 2022 at 12:30 pm
The leftists at Georgetown University Law School, both students and administrators alike, are waging a vicious campaign to silence and cancel Ilya Shapiro, who was recently hired by the law school to run its Center for the Constitution. What was Shapiro’s crime? Daring to criticize Joe Biden for announcing that he would nominate only a Black woman to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Breyer. In tweets on January 26, 2022, Shapiro stated:
“Is Joe Biden racist and sexist for saying his Supreme Court nominee will be a black woman?”
“Because Biden said [he’ll] only consider black women for SCOTUS, his nominee will always have an asterisk attached. Fitting that the Court takes up affirmative action next term.”
“Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman….”
Shapiro was clearly justified in calling the president out for explicitly declaring that his Supreme Court nominee will be chosen on the basis of race and sex, rather than competence and character, in violation of the inspiring words of Martin Luther King, Jr. In saying this, Shapiro was just telling the truth. His statements were not racist or sexist; indeed, he wanted to eliminate racism and sexism in the selection of Court nominees.
But these facts did not stop the left at Georgetown from declaring war on Shapiro. Indeed, immediately after Shapiro’s tweets, the left at the law school tried to silence and cancel him. On January 27, William Treanor–woke Dean of the Georgetown University Law Center–sent a letter to members of the law school declaring:
“Ilya Shapiro, who was recently hired to direct one of Georgetown Law’s research institutes, posted a series of tweets on Twitter that he has since deleted. The tweet’s suggestion that the best Supreme Court nominee could not be a Black woman and their use of demeaning language are appalling. The Tweets are at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law and are damaging to the culture of equity and inclusion that Georgetown Law is building every day.”
Treanor then put Shapiro on leave pending an investigation into his tweets. One has to ask what they will be investigating as Shapiro merely stated the truth; the truth the woke do not want to hear.
The Georgetown Black Law Student Association then wrote a letter to the administration demanding that Shapiro be fired. Next, a group of woke students led by the Black Law Student Association decided to hold a sit-in to protest Shapiro’s actions. According to Nate Hochman of National Review, the sit-in, attended by university officials, became a woke love-fest. One student demanded that Shapiro’s law center be abolished:
“You can do as much diversity training as you want with staff. But I feel like that Center has a certain ideology… so I really want you to defend why we really need it, beyond, like, you know, free speech, and beyond diversity of opinion. I really want us to think critically about why we still need it.”
Another student asked for a “reparations” package for black students and a cry room for woke students upset by Shapiro’s words:
“Is there an office they can go to? I don’t know what it would look like, but if they want to cry, if they need to break down, where can they go? Because we’re at a point where students are coming out of class to go to the bathroom to cry.”
Of course, the administrators agreed with the need for such a room. Dean Mitchell Bailin stated:
“It is really, really hard to walk out of class or a meeting in tears, and you should always have a place on campus where you can go. And if you’re finding that you’re not getting the person that you want to talk to or not getting the space that you need, reach out to me anytime—anytime—and we will find you space.”
Another student asked university administrators to specifically respond to the critics of the Black Law Student Association:
“Something that’s important is to remind our classmates that are attacking us that they are only here because our ancestors were sold for them to be here. And I think it’s a very important fact that is not talked about explicitly enough, because we are still being attacked. So I just would appreciate in whatever message that’s going out [to the student body], that our classmates are explicitly reminded: Do not attack the people who were sold for you to have this opportunity… That needs to be something that these people are reminded of, because they continue to attack us as if it is not on our backs that they are even here.”
How this student got into law school boggles the mind.
Dean Trainor of course agreed with the radical students. He stated during the sit-in:
“Again, I was appalled to see the tweet. I tried to move as quickly as I can… within hours of the tweet going out, I made my statement… [I was] so appalled by the tweets and this is painful for all of us but I know how painful and awful it is for you, and I know what a terrible burden it is… I’m grateful for you taking the time to talk, I’m grateful for your insights, I heard a lot today that I won’t just be reflecting on but that I’ll be moving forward with, and I will be in dialogue with you about what we’re doing.”
The pandering of the administration during the sit-in makes one cringe. As Teddy Roosevelt would say, the administrators “had backbones of a chocolate éclair.”
So there you have it. A law professor honestly speaks against identity politics and giving anyone a preference based on race or sex and immediately his woke university and leftist students try to silence and cancel him. But this is what the left always does. Because it knows that it cannot win any important debate on the merits, it always tries to shame its opponents into silence. Dare to oppose any woke dogma based on the truth, and the left will call you a racist, a bigot, and a Nazi, will try to cancel you on social media, will try to get you fired from your job, and will try to get your colleagues and friends to shun you, among other things. And due to these aggressive attacks, the woke hope to silence anyone else who would defend the “bigot” or likewise speak the truth. This woke strategy was on full display in the leftist campaign against Ilya Shapiro for daring to speak the truth. Let’s hope that other professors will defend Shapiro rather than remaining quite for fear of the woke mob. Justice and truth hang in the balance.