I'm almost two weeks late to this party, but I wanted to congratulate Dean William Treanor of Georgetown Law for his strong response to the letter sent by Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin insisting that Georgetown Law "eliminate[] all DEI from [the] school and its curriculum", and threatening not to hire any Georgetown graduate if it fails to do so.
Dean Treanor writes:
The First Amendment . . . guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it. The Supreme Court has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university's First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it.
This is a bedrock principle of constitutional law—recognized not only by the courts, but by the administration in which you serve. The Department of Education confirmed last week that it cannot restrict First Amendment rights and that it is statutorily prohibited from 'exercising control over the content of school curricula.' . . .
Given the First Amendment's protection of a university's freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind th[e Administration's] threat is clear, as is the attack on the University's mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.
