I remember how it was -- JR
Judges Fighting Yale Law School Show They Know ‘What Time It Is’ in America
Josh Hammer
Late last month at the sixth annual Kentucky Chapters Conference of The Federalist Society, Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit (disclosure: my former boss) issued a call to arms.
Ho—who earlier this year ruffled feathers at Georgetown University Law Center by using the occasion of his own talk at Georgetown to defend then-embattled Georgetown scholar Ilya Shapiro from the school’s own pusillanimous dean—announced in the Bluegrass State that “starting today,” he would not hire future law clerks who matriculate at Yale Law School. (Current Yale Law students and Yale Law alumni are unaffected.)
The reasons for the law clerk hiring moratorium are fairly straightforward: “Cancel culture” and, more specifically, a hostility to religious and conservative viewpoints and a demonstrated willingness to “shout down” such speakers, are disproportionately pervasive at Yale Law; Yale Law consistently ranks as, and holds itself as, the single preeminent institution of legal education in America; because of that perceived perch, Yale Law is more capable of influencing other legal institutions to denounce “cancel culture” and make itself genuinely open to “dissident” speech from the “deplorable” half of the American citizenry.
Ho’s critics immediately swarmed from every possible direction. The Left was, of course, predictably apoplectic. On the Right, some, such as the purportedly right-of-center Dispatch podcaster Sarah Isgur, have complained that it’s not clear what Yale could actually do to effectuate meaningful change.
Such defeatism is unwarranted. One clear first step would be for Yale to embrace the Chicago Principles, a product of the University of Chicago, which would have the effect of protecting conservative students, conservative speech, and conservative programming.
Some—seemingly including fellow 5th Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith, who took time away from defending corporate vaccine mandates in the Federal Reporter to condemn Ho’s stance as “regrettable”—suggest that a boycott of Yale Law is counterproductive and bad for Yale students.
But the hard truth is that, right now, conservative law school matriculants should simply not go to Yale—period. Yale does not want them, and their peers will do their best to stymie their careers, and they will be supported by the Yale Law School administration in those efforts. An investigation last year by The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, covered by this column at the time, powerfully highlighted the point.
The reality is that, if Yale Law School were openly discriminatory against blacks and/or Hispanics, not a single person would object to a boycott; on the contrary, all decent people would join it. The fact that Ho’s speech in Kentucky elicited as much scorn and dismissiveness as it did thus demonstrates something that we conservatives already knew to be the case, but which can still be galling to internalize: Anti-conservative, anti-religious, and anti-traditionalist discrimination does not attain anywhere remotely near the same cultural clout as does opposition to racial discrimination.
Fortunately, there has been some recent momentum against Yale.
Last week, Sibarium reported at the Free Beacon that 12 federal judges, spanning both the trial and appellate levels, had confirmed to him that they would also no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School.
And last Friday, Nate Hochman of National Review reported that conservative stalwart Judge Lisa Branch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit would join Ho. In her statement, Branch cited the “legitimate concerns” that had been “recently raised … about the lack of free speech on law school campuses, Yale in particular.”
Other judges, while stopping short of an on-record law clerk hiring boycott, have offered rhetorical support. Ho and Smith’s 5th Circuit colleague, Judge Edith H. Jones, told Reuters earlier that she is “very worried” about cancellation-style tactics in the legal profession, “and to the extent such exclusionary tactics are encouraged by the law schools, shame on them.”
Much as we might say, then, that there are some conservative politicians and intellectuals who are pushing the Right to move beyond the dog-eared “zombie Reaganism” playbook and embrace some newer tactics, so too do we see such a divide emerging in the judicial arena. Much as in politics, the judicial “zombie Reaganites,” such as Smith, are misguided.
Notably, with a mere two on record boycotting federal judges as of this writing, Yale Law has already been pressured enough where it felt the need to respond. On Oct. 12, it issued a missive titled “A Message to Our Alumni on Free Speech at Yale Law School,” which brought Yale incrementally closer to the Chicago Principles.
The steps announced in the brief post are far from perfect; indeed, in what can only be described as an epic self-own evincing the pampered nature of its own student body, Yale Law “welcomed a new Dean of Students who is focused on ensuring students learn to resolve disagreements among themselves whenever possible, rather than reflexively looking to the institution to serve as a referee.”
Imagine that—the nation’s putatively best institution of legal education forced to hire a dean simply to help students get along. Perhaps those students forgot that the practice of law itself is inherently adversarial by nature.
Still, though, if only two federal appellate judges can lead to meaningful action by Yale Law, then what might a broader boycott accomplish? Judges who have privately pledged to not hire future law clerks from Yale should now go on record in order to help generate momentum and, ultimately, better protect conservative law students, conservative lawyers, and conservative speech. And those judges should go on record posthaste.
Nor is there any reason why future tactics in “canceling the cancelers” must be cabined solely to the realm of the judicial branch. As law professor Josh Blackman blogged shortly after Ho’s speech in Kentucky:
“A future Republican administration can categorically label every [Yale Law] grad a squish. It is quite feasible for President [Ron] DeSantis [a Harvard Law grad] to simply boycott all Yale grads who matriculated after 2021. Good luck with explaining why you chose to stay at [Yale)] for that shiny brass ring as some Chicago grad gets the [nomination].”
More generally, conservatives must be willing to prudentially engage in escalatory tit-for-tat tactics across all areas of our republican life—to merely rebalance our wildly off-kilter status quo that favors progressives over conservatives across all of society, if nothing else.
If the notion of “knowing what time it is” means anything, surely it means that. Now, with a small victory at Yale Law under our belts, let’s keep it up.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/17/canceling-cancelers-at-yale-law-school/
*******************************************************Vermont School District Suspends Father of Girl Who Pushed Back Against Biological Male in Her Locker Room
A Vermont school district under fire for allowing a biologically male student to use the girls’ locker room has suspended a father from his position as soccer coach for using male pronouns to refer to the trans-identifying student.
Travis Allen has been suspended without pay from his job as the Randolph Union Middle School girls soccer coach, Orange Southwest School District Superintendent Layne Millington said in a Tuesday letter. His suspension follows a Daily Signal report highlighting his daughter’s discomfort at a biological male using her locker room while she was changing.
The superintendent, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal, said that Allen was being punished because he “misgendered a transgender student in our district.”
Allen’s daughter Blake is one of several young ladies who said they were in the Randolph Union High School locker room changing when the trans-identifying student, a biological male, entered the locker room.
Several girls who spoke with The Daily Signal said they asked the student to leave, but that the student did not immediately do so. The girls said that the student stood in the corner and looked at them while they were changing, causing them to feel uncomfortable.
In a Facebook comment, Blake’s mother, Jessica Allen, told the trans-identifying student’s guardian, Melissa Sivvy, that she would be “GLAD to have a conversation” on “this matter.” Sivvy, who has told The Daily Signal that her child is a girl and deserves to be in girls’ spaces, had asked for “justice for whoever was wronged” in a Facebook comment.
“I am the father of the girl you claim ‘made up a story for attention,’” Travis Allen wrote in a Facebook reply to Sivvy. “The truth is your son watched my daughter and multiple other girls change in the locker room. While he got a free show, they got violated.”
The father added: “You think this is fine and dandy. I wonder how you would feel if I watched you undress?”
Allen told school officials that he called the biologically male student a “he” on purpose, Millington said in his letter, adding: “Such conduct is unprofessional and unbecoming, and flies in the face of the Vermont Principal Association’s athletic regulations, Vermont State regulations, and the RUHS Middle-High School expectations.”
Millington wrote that school officials have “significant concerns” about Allen’s ability to “support all of our students as the law requires.”
Allen offered to avoid using gender pronouns while communicating with trans-identifying students and to take down his social media post. But the school district demanded a public apology from Allen, which he refused, resulting in his suspension.
“The public apology was how I could keep my position and continue to coach at the school,” Allen said, describing himself as “pretty upset” by the entire sequence of events. The father of four said that he has coached his children for the past 12 years as a way of being involved in their lives and teaching them life lessons.
“It’s not just playing soccer,” he said. “We have to deal with other personal issues that come with the team as well—bad attitudes, kids being bossy, things like that.”
“When he asked me to publicly apologize, I thought about it,” Allen told The Daily Signal. “I did pause and waited a few seconds. And I’m thinking, ‘If I say that I’ll apologize, I’ll be able to coach my youngest daughter for the rest of the season, but I’m going to, in turn, hurt my other daughter, because I’m not standing up for what we believe in, I’m just cowing to them like so many other people have done. And I just can’t do that.’”
Allen said he and his family were never looking for attention.
“We’re a family that pretty much goes with the flow,” he said. “And this time we just couldn’t do it.”
School officials have cited state law allowing for students to use locker rooms and bathrooms that align with their stated gender identity. Those officials have repeatedly said that they care about everyone’s safety, and that Randolph Union High School is investigating whether harassment took place when the girls told their biologically male classmate not to come into their locker room while they were changing.
Co-Principal Lisa Floyd told The Daily Signal on Thursday: “Student safety is our district’s highest priority. We always do our best to maintain a supportive learning environment for all of our students.”
“The district has policies and procedures to respond to student harassment based on protected characteristics or other misconduct,” she added. “We are not able to discuss any specific students because of federal privacy laws. However, when we become aware that there has been a violation of our policies, including harassment of other students, we respond immediately.
“Where the policies and expectations are violated, we take disciplinary action consistent with the law and reasonably calculated to prevent further misconduct. We also do our best to give victims supportive measures,” Floyd said.
During a forum with parents last week, Millington claimed that coverage of the girls’ pushback has sparked hatred and bigotry toward both the trans-identifying student and the school district. And other parents and students criticized Blake and her family for speaking up on the matter.
Parents who spoke with The Daily Signal said the superintendent and the forum did not focus on the most pressing matter at hand; namely, their daughters’ discomfort at having a biologically male student in the locker room able to observe them while they are changing.
“I want all kids, all kids at RUHS to feel safe, all kids nationwide to feel safe in their spaces, where they need to change or are supposed to be private spaces,” Jessica Allen told The Daily Signal in an interview last week. “We have to get creative as a nation to really figure out how to keep everybody safe, and everyone working together. The hate really does need to stop, because that’s not what this is about. … Let’s have an open dialogue about how to keep everybody safe and feeling comfortable, because we’ve taught children to protect their bodies.”
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You are needed to educate voters about Critical Race Theory (CRT) before the November elections
The Left counts on parents not knowing what is going on with their children’s indoctrination in schools. If parents do know, the Left counts on them staying quiet.
And this strategy by the Left has taken root.
Already, thanks to radical teachers’ unions and liberal school boards, many children have fallen victim to the first phase of Critical Race Theory – that parental authority is not the final word - children don't have to believe what their parents believe.
Here’s a teacher in Utah indoctrinating her class on the first day of school that their parents are dumb and should not be listened to:
My parents are freaking dumb, okay. And the minute I figured that out, the world opens up. You don't have to do everything your parents say. And you don't have to believe what your parents believe. Because most likely, you're smarter than them. ...¹
Once the breakdown of parental authority is established then comes the poison of CRT. Here are eight ugly truths about the destructive and harmful teachings of Critical Race Theory and why conservatives need to lead the charge to remove it from our schools:
1. Children are taught first that racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, every interaction, and at home.²
2. That white people only give black and other people of color opportunities and freedoms when it is in the interest of white people.²
3. CRT teaches free societies are racist and bad. It demands they be dismantled and replace with something its advocates can control.²
4. The Left wants the stories of minority struggles and hardship to the justification for rebuilding society. CRT is used to teach children that science, fact, and reason are a “white” way to build societies.²
5. CRT teaches children that all potential alternatives to view society, like colorblindness, character, and achievement are forms of racism.²
6. CRT teaches children to band together and attack and bully anyone who disagrees with CRT as a racist and white supremacist, even if those people are black.²
7. CRT allows the Left to never be satisfied, so it can remain as an activist black-hole that is free to destroy everything it wants to control.²
8. CRT is Marxist in that it uses race instead of economic class as the line where white people are the “privileged” and “oppressors” above the line while Blacks and other people of color are below that line who become “marginalized” and “oppressed.”³
Despite all the liberal hype and Big Media support for CRT, opposing CRT is a winning message for Republicans going into the 2022 midterms. According to a survey of 1,200 likely suburban voters that the NRSC polled from 192 suburban counties in 37 states, GOP candidates can win on demanding CRT to be removed from their state and district school curriculum.⁴
This was clearly the right choice of conservatives and concerned parents in Virginia who feared the dissemination of liberal ideas being taught to their school children under the guise of “equity.” Because of this common fear, they banded together to challenge the CRT movement at the state level.
In fact, it was this anti-CRT movement by conservatives and concerned parents that played a major role in Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in taking back the governorship in Virginia in 2021. With the help of conservatives and parents, Youngkin was able to increase the suburban mom vote, along with the Hispanic and African American vote, because together they exposed Youngkin’s Democrat opponent’s radical position for school boards having the sole power on what to teach children.
These voting blocs all favored having a say in their children’s educations, include removing CRT from schools and support for Charter Schools where parents have more say in what is taught.
With 58 percent of Americans polled opposed to teaching Critical Race Theory in school, conservative and Republican voters can help elect GOP candidates by educating others to expose Democrat candidates who support CRT as both radical and extreme.⁵
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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