Yale Law dean rebukes 'rude and insulting' students who protested speaker - Reuters
(Reuters) - Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken on Monday called the behavior of some Yale Law students who protested a controversial campus speaker “unacceptable,” marking her first public comments on the March 10 incident that spurred a wave of discussion about free speech at the elite school.
“This is an institution of higher learning, not a town square,” Gerken wrote in a message to students, faculty, and staff that underlined the school’s commitment to free speech. “[Yale Law School] is a professional school, and this is not how lawyers interact.”
The school's Federalist Society chapter had invited attorney Kristen Waggoner to speak about her role in a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the high court found that a student could sue Georgia public university officials for violating his rights by barring him from distributing religious literature on campus.
Waggoner, who is general counsel of the conservative religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom, previously defended a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding in a different Supreme Court case.
Gerken said the university maintains a three-warning protocol, and the 120 protesters who attended the March 10 panel left the room after the first warning. However, she said some students were "rude and insulting" to law school faculty and staff and some continued to be disruptive from outside the room where the panel occurred.
“I expect far more from our students, and I want to state unequivocally that this cannot happen again,” she wrote. “My administration will be in serious discussion with our students about our policies and norms for the rest of the semester.”
The protest drew widespread attention, joining larger national debates about campus free speech. Senior Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sent a message to federal judges nationwide urging them to think twice about hiring as clerks any Yale Law School students who participated in the protest.
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source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/yale-law-dean-rebukes-rude-insulting-students-who-protested-speaker-2022-03-28/
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