The ongoing controversy at Stanford University Law School over the student shout-down of a conservative speaker underscores precisely how progressive cancel culture is helping feed exaggerated Republican narratives about progressivism run amok. Republicans are just as guilty of silencing opposing views, as was immediately evident last week in the Tennessee legislature’s expulsion of two Black lawmakers who dared to speak out against the guns used in a Nashville school mass shooting.
What distinguishes the Stanford case is that it occurred in an environment dedicated to the civil debate of diametrically opposing views. In law school as well as in the courts where those law students ultimately will practice, the whole idea is to present the best case possible in hopes of persuading a jury and/or judge. Self-righteous Stanford students instead opted to yell over their invited speaker to deny him the right to be heard. This was, in a microcosm, a glimpse of where America is heading unless cooler heads prevail.
On March 9, conservative federal appeals court Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan attempted to address a packed seminar room full of Stanford law students. Progressives were upset because Duncan was a guest of the student chapter of the conservative Federalist Society. He had defended a Louisiana ban on gay marriage as well as a North Carolina law requiring transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender they were assigned at birth.
