As David Bernstein notes, the four months it took for Georgetown Law to “investigate” Ilya Shapiro’s two twits was longer than most Supreme Court nomination hearings, excluding Merrick Garland since he was never given a hearing. Ilya called the twits “inartful,” which they certainly were, but “reckless” would be a better characterization, which is what I called them.
Could it have really taken four months to “investigate” two twits? Of course not. Perhaps the expectation was that the flames of social media seeking to burn Shapiro at the stake would die down, maybe even flame out. Perhaps they could come up with some other way to graciously remove Georgetown Law Center from the bullseye of woke outrage without having to court disaster from the unduly passionate children while recognizing that pretty much everyone with the intellectual age of greater than 12 condemned Georgetown Law’s suspending Ilya. Academic freedom was very much on the line here, as was the realization that hypocrisy would eventually serve to eat them all if legal academics didn’t draw a line.
And so Georgetown Law, after four months of “investigation,” finally stumbled upon a cool solution that would thread the needle between their outraged tuition payers and the grownups. Ilya’s twits were made before his employment at Georgetown Law technically commenced and so were not subject to the schools policy of acquiescing to its most fragile student while pretending to support academic freedom. Problem solved?
My long public nightmare is over. Tomorrow I assume my duties as a senior lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center and executive director of its Center for the Constitution. A four-month investigation by the human-resources department and the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action determined that I wasn’t yet an employee when I posted a tweet to which some at the school objected (which the Journal covered from the beginning) and so wasn’t subject to the relevant policies on antidiscrimination and professional conduct.
While recognizing he “won” by TKO, Ilya’s initial reaction was to seek peace in the valley.
[Georgetown Law School Dean William] Treanor also said that so long as I conduct myself professionally, he’ll have my back. I’ll hold both of us to both ends of that bargain. On my part, that means muting and blocking bad-faith Twitter antagonists—some of whom, I’m sorry to say, are in academia—and resisting the urge to correct all who are wrong on the internet. Not that bad tweets are firing offenses, but it would be good practice for all of us to stop late-night doom-scrolling and launching snarky ripostes to each latest inanity from our governing classes.
Shapiro may have wanted to teach, to take charge of the law school’s Center for the Constitution, badly enough to write those words without much deep thought. Conduct himself “professionally”? By whose metric? What does that mean? Could there be any words more chilling, more contrary to academic freedom, than to conduct himself professionally in the eyes of the dean who already condemned his twits as discriminatory and contrary to the school’s position on diversity and inclusion.
And then the other shoe fell.
After full consideration of the report of the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action (“IDEAA Report”), and upon consultation with counsel, family, and trusted advisers, it has become apparent that my remaining at Georgetown has become untenable. Although I celebrated my “technical victory” in the Wall Street Journal, further analysis shows that you’ve made it impossible for me to fulfill the duties of my appointed post.
In a matter of days, Shapiro went from celebrating his technical win to . . . resigning. In a four-page scorching letter, Ilya recognized that he was walking into a trap.
Third, under the reasoning of the IDEAA Report, none of this objective textual analysis even matters. As the report put it, “The University’s anti-harassment policy does not require that a respondent intend to denigrate or show hostility or aversion to individuals based on a protected status. Instead, the Policy requires consideration of the ‘purpose or effect’ of a respondent’s conduct.” According to this theory, the mere fact that many people were offended, or claimed to be, is enough for me to have violated the policies under which I was being investigated.
Having already been demonized beyond repair, the ironically subconstitutional notion that any future offense would be determined based not on what was objectively said or intended, but on whether anyone claimed to be offended, harmed or traumatized by it. What were the chances that Ilya would make it a month before the cabal of anti-racist warriors didn’t find something to plausibly (assuming plausibility is involved at all) claim was offensive? Of course, the alternative was the Shapiro never say anything, unlike other academics at Georgetown.
Contrast my situation with these recent examples:
• In 2018, Georgetown protected this tweet from Professor Carol Christine Fair during Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation process: “Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.” When Prof. Fair advocated mass murder and castration based on race and gender, Georgetown did not initiate an investigation, but instead invoked Georgetown’s free-expression policy.
Was Ilya wrong to turn down the opportunity, having overcome the initial demand for his cancellation, to teach students, to test the efficacy of Georgetown Law Center’s dedication to free speech and academic freedom? Did he have the platform and opportunity, and choose to walk away rather than face the heat?
I cannot again subject my family to the public attacks on my character and livelihood that you and IDEAA have now made foreseeable, indeed inevitable. As a result of the hostile work environment that you and they have created, I have no choice but to resign.
Ilya Shapiro has never been particularly shy about asserting his views, even when unpopular or challenging to progressive orthodoxy. Indeed, playing this out in the pages of the Wall Street Journal isn’t the conduct of a timid soul. But then, was there really a chance that Ilya would survive at Georgetown Law? Instead of muzzling himself, he went out on his own terms.
No comments:
Post a Comment