It’s a topic at the school of free speech
Palestinian Liberation, a bylaw, and discrimination: Would it have been better if Judge Duncan hadn’t lashed out at the protesters?
The group said in a statement that supporting Palestinian liberation didn’t mean opposition to Jewish people or the Jewish religion. Members of the group did not respond to messages seeking an interview.
Mr. Chemerinsky met with the university’s Hillel rabbi, and spoke with several Jewish students, but the reaction to the bylaw wasn’t as strong as some might have thought.
Mr. Marcus, a Berkeley law school graduate, said in an interview that he was contacted by law students who were worried about the bylaw. He said he spent weeks trying to support them and wrote his article after Berkeley did not “rectify the problem.”
Mr Marcus said that free speech doesn’t protect discrimination, because the bylaw was frightening and unexpected.
Mr. Chemerinsky said he learned about Mr. Marcus’s article, which he described as “inflammatory and distorted,” while he was in Los Angeles for a conference. Mr Chemerinsky said that he typed out a response and then didn’t think about it. He received many emails that afternoon. At an alumni event that night, the law school’s perceived hostility to Jews was “all anyone wanted to talk about.”
Not allowing Zionist speakers, he said, was a proxy for prohibiting Jews. The provisions, he said, are “aimed at the Jewish community and those who support the Jewish community,” even while acknowledging that the policy could allow Jewish speakers and bar those who are not Jewish.
Tirien Steinbach wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal explaining her position after she rose to speak at the event. She said that she was trying to de-escalate the situation and noted that she defended Duncan’s right to speak during her remarks. “While free speech isn’t easy or comfortable, it’s necessary for democracy,” Steinbach wrote.
David French, in Times Opinion: “It is entirely appropriate to ask any judge difficult questions during the question and answer session after a speech. It is free speech to protest but mob censorship if you shout down or disrupt a speech.
The judge, the student protesters, and the on- scene administrator made the afternoon a fiasco, says Steven Lubet of the law school.
Would it have been better if Judge Duncan had not lashed out at the protesters? Yes, I do. [But] I’m not going to sit here and judge the judge for not acting more judicially in response to verbal abuse.”
Ed Whelan, a conservative activist, criticizes Martinez for not punishing any of the students. (In her memo, she explained that it would be difficult to determine who deserved punishment and suggested that the associate dean’s implicit support for the heckling made it difficult for the school to sanction students afterward.)
David Bernstein of George Mason University called Martinez’s memo passionate and excellent but criticized Stanford for having only one known conservative among its law professors: “Intentionally or not, the Stanford faculty is sending its students the message that right-of-center views are not respectable, and not worth listening to.”
