New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Dean: Protest ‘complied’ with free speech rules
But Gerken says students acted unacceptably
NEW HAVEN — The Yale Law School students who protested a conservative speaker did not violate university policies but their behavior was unacceptable and “cannot happen again,” Dean Heather Gerken wrote in an email Monday.
Gerken wrote that the “several students engaged in rude and insulting behavior” and many were excessively loud in the hallway. However, the students did not violate the law school’s “threewarning protocol” and the event went on, she wrote. The moderator, professor Kate Stith, read the first warning, then the protesters left.
The March 10 event was sponsored by the Federalist Society, and included Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom and Monica Miller of the American Humanist Association. Waggoner had recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, involving a student’s right to proselytize on campus. Miller supported that argument.
While the panel’s focus was on free speech, the students protested Waggoner’s presence because of the ADF’s position on LGBTQ rights. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it is “a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society.”
Some students also objected to the presence of Yale police officers at the event, two in plainclothes, according to the Yale Daily News, which first reported on the event.
Gerken wrote in her email, “Under the University’s free expression policy, student groups have every right to invite speakers to campus, and others have every right to voice opposition. Our commitment to free speech is free and unwavering. Because unfettered debate is essential to our mission, we allow people to speak even when their speech is flatly inconsistent with our core values.”
Protests of both conservative and liberal speakers have occurred regularly over the last few years. Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Insititute was shouted down at the University of California Hastings College of the Law on March 2, during a discussion of the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Stephen Breyer.
Jeff Younger, a Texas state politician, had to have police intervene March 2 when he attempted to speak at the University of North Texas. Younger promotes criminalizing sex-reassignment surgery.
Professor Josh Blackman of the South Texas College of Law was shouted down at the City University of New York Law School in 2017. Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, was prevented from speaking at the College of William and Mary in October 2017 by a Black Lives Matter group.
At Yale, conservative blogger Milo Yiannopoulos, who planned to speak dressed in Native American costume, canceled after students protested his appearance.