ICYMI: Washington Examiner Op-Ed: Yale Law School still refusing to correct its anti-free speech way

This week, Buckley Program Founder and Executive Director Lauren Noble warned in the Washington Examiner that there’s little reason for optimism about Yale Law’s recent statement on free speech.

A normal reaction to failure is to do something about it. Either you work to actively to rectify your past mistakes or take new steps to avoid making those same mistakes in future.

Yale Law School administrators, however, seem not to have learned this lesson. As the consequences of the school’s embrace of cancel culture come home to roost, the administration is meeting a demand for action by doubling down on the kinds of policies that got them into trouble in the first place.

Last month, federal Judge James Ho announced he would no longer accept law clerks from Yale Law School as a result of the school’s anti- free speech policies. Thirteen additional federal judges followed suit shortly after.

One can agree or disagree with these judges’ decision, but all of this was avoidable

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Laughably, Gerken highlights an incident from March of this year, during which more than 100 Yale Law students shouted down a panel on free speech…

Yet no students were punished for disrupting the panel. All Yale did was reiterate policies that it isn’t enforcing. What message does that send other than that there will be no consequences for those who disrespect and trample on the free speech rights of others?

Among Yale’s more concerning “concrete steps” is a new policy prohibiting “surreptitious recordings” on campus — a move that seems more designed to protect the school from bad publicity than to support free speech.

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Yale Law School has done little to assuage the concerns of cancel culture on campus. They need to correct course, and fast.

Read the full piece here.

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