Prosecutors on Thursday filed felony charges against 12 pro-Palestinian protesters who allegedly broke into a Stanford University administration building last year, causing extensive damage that could now land them behind bars for up to three years.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen charged 11 current or former Stanford students and one other individual with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass.
On June 5, 2024, police arrested 13 people alleged to have been involved in breaking into and subsequently barricading themselves inside the Stanford president’s office that morning, demanding that the university boycott and divest from companies associated with the Israeli government.
“Dissent is American. Vandalism is criminal,” Rosen <a href="https://da.santaclaracounty.gov/stanford-protesters-charged-destructive-building-takeover">said</a>. “There is a bright line between making a point and committing a crime. These defendants crossed the line into criminality when they broke into those offices, barricaded themselves inside, and started a calculated plan of destruction.”
The protesters face up to three years and eight months in prison, plus restitution payments if convicted.
Most of the 3,000+ individuals arrested at pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/us/stanford-protesters-palestine-felony.html">faced</a> misdemeanor charges or had their cases dismissed, according to the New York Times.
Prosecutors said protesters attempted to scrub their involvement by deleting messaging apps from their phones after their arrest. Investigators said they found evidence that they had preemptively surveilled the building, studied security patterns, and assigned specific roles in the break-in.
Police <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5244334-pro-palestinian-protesters-stanford-felony-charges/">recovered</a> backpacks containing hammers, chisels, crowbars, and goggles from the scene. The damage inside included broken windows, disabled security cameras, and fake blood splashed throughout the offices.
&#8220;Whenever you have multiple people working together to commit a crime, it&#8217;s much more dangerous to the public,&#8221; Rosen stated. &#8220;Speech is protected by the First Amendment. Vandalism is prosecuted under the Penal Code.&#8221;
Red graffiti appeared on campus buildings the same morning with messages like &#8220;Pigs Taste Best Dead&#8221; and &#8220;Death to Israehell.&#8221;
Stanford is among dozens of schools currently under investigation by the Trump administration regarding their handling of anti-Israel protests. The university had previously imposed its own sanctions, including two-quarter suspensions for student protesters.
Rosen emphasized that he does not wish to see the Stanford protesters serve prison time despite the serious charges.
Rather than contending with a lengthy legal battle, Rosen instead proposed sentencing the vandals to community service in the Santa Clara County Sheriff&#8217;s work program if they pleaded guilty, where they would clean highways or government buildings.
&#8220;This is kind of biblical,&#8221; Rosen said. &#8220;You trashed a building, so your punishment should be cleaning things up.&#8221;
Stanford spokeswoman Dee Mostofi said the university respects Rosen&#8217;s charging decisions, noting that Stanford had already imposed its own sanctions on student protesters, including two-quarter suspensions, delays in degree conferrals, and community service hours.

Stanford students protest Israel in California

Anti-Israel Protesters At Stanford Face Felony Charges For Campus Building Takeover, Vandalism

antisemitism

California

Crime

Protesters

Stanford University

U.S.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was confirmed Tuesday night by the Senate in a party-line vote to lead the National Institutes of Health.
The Senate voted 53-47 to confirm Bhattacharya with all Republicans supporting his nomination and every Democrat voting against confirming the Stanford School of Medicine medical professor. Bhattacharya has promised to bring more accountability to the NIH, which oversees tens of billions of dollars in federal grant dollars. 
“The mission of the NIH is to address the health needs the American people have and to expand life expectancy of the American people. And we have not achieved that. It’s flatlined,” Bhattacharya <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jay-bhattacharya-promises-to-bring-accountability-to-nih-after-covid-failure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> during his confirmation hearing earlier this month before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
Bhattacharya widely rose to prominence during the COVID pandemic, when he was a sharp critic of the government-imposed lockdowns and was one of the first to express concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccine mandates. During COVID, he was an advisor to Florida, aiding Governor Ron DeSantis in the reopening of the Sunshine State. 
“Science should be an engine for freedom. Knowledge and freedom … it shouldn’t be pushing mandates for vaccines like the COVID vaccines,” Bhattacharya said during his confirmation hearing. “The role of the scientist should not be to say that you can’t send your kid to school for two years.”
In his nomination announcement, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-nominates-dr-jay-bhattacharya-to-lead-nih" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that Bhattacharya would work alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “Make America Healthy Again” and “restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease.”
Bhattacharya also promised during his confirmation hearing that he would support experiments that take different approaches to an issue, saying that much of the established scientific community has failed to provide satisfactory answers. 
On Tuesday, the Senate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-names-marty-makary-to-lead-food-and-drug-administration" target="_blank" rel="noopener">also voted</a> 56-44 to confirm Dr. Marty Makary to head up the Food and Drug Administration. Democrat Senators Dick Durbin (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH), and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) joined Republicans in voting for Makary. 
When he nominated Makary, Trump said that he would work with RFK Jr. to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.”

NIH Director Nominee Jayanta Bhattacharya

Senate Confirms COVID Lockdown Opponent Dr. Jay Bhattacharya To Lead NIH

COVID-19

Donald Trump

Jay Bhattacharya

Lockdowns

Science

Senate

Trump Administration

An email suggests the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/department-of-homeland-security" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Department of Homeland Security (DHS)</a> encouraged the creation of a &#8220;disinformation&#8221; group that House Republicans believe was used by the federal government to quietly censor free speech in the lead-up to the 2020 election, according to congressional investigators.
An <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/EIP_Jira_Ticket_Staff_Report_11-6-23_Clean.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interim staff report</a> from the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released on Monday said it was &#8220;understood&#8221; that the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was created at the behest of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within DHS.
The report includes a July 31, 2020, email, obtained via subpoena, in which the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab senior director Graham Brookie told colleagues, &#8220;We just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA.&#8221;
EIP, led by Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), has attracted scrutiny from House Republicans who suspect it was a conduit through which federal agencies could submit &#8220;misinformation reports&#8221; that fostered recommendations to Big Tech companies for censoring posts and users on social media platforms.
Among the targets were many prominent Republican officials and conservative figures — including former President Donald Trump, GOP lawmakers, and even The Daily Wire&#8217;s Candace Owens — for such things as &#8220;true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions.&#8221;
In an X thread commenting on the staff report, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Stanford University only produced information under threat of contempt — something which The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jordan-threatens-subpoena-enforcement-against-stanford-in-censorship-probe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first reported</a> in June of this year. &#8220;The American people deserve to know if they were targeted by their own government and so-called &#8216;disinformation&#8217; experts,&#8221; Jordan <a href="https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1721674477157654873" target="_blank" rel="noopener">added</a>.
Other emails highlighted by the staff report discuss coordinating with CISA to combat &#8220;misinformation&#8221; or &#8220;disinformation.&#8221;
The report also explores various claims about who actually originated the EIP idea. EIP said in a post-election report that four interns came up with the &#8220;initial idea.&#8221; SIO Director Alex Stamos claimed in testimony that he came up with the idea. He also acknowledged &#8220;probably&#8221; consulting with then-CISA Director Christopher Krebs about the partnership in the summer of 2020.
The Daily Wire reached out to DHS, CISA, and Brookie seeking comment, particularly on whether Brookie&#8217;s July 2020 email did indeed confirm that EIP was created at the request of the federal agencies.
A spokesperson for the Atlantic Council, a think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Wire that Brookie has nothing to add.
&#8220;Graham and the Council have cooperated fully throughout the process and are proud of the vital work the DFRLab does to counter disinformation attacks on the United States and its friends and allies around the globe,&#8221; the spokesperson added.
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CISA executive director Brandon Wales <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/11/06/news/new-emails-show-dhs-created-stanford-disinfo-group-that-censored-speech-before-2020-election/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told The New York Post</a> that his agency “does not and has never censored speech or facilitated censorship.&#8221;
He also said, &#8220;In response to concerns from election officials of all parties regarding foreign influence operations and disinformation that may impact the security of election infrastructure, CISA mitigates the risk of disinformation by sharing information on election literacy and election security with the public and by amplifying the trusted voices of election officials across the nation.&#8221;
The staff interim report comes after a Senate hearing last week in which Biden administration officials <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-director-says-interactions-with-social-media-companies-have-fundamentally-changed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">offered insight</a> into how agencies now approach Big Tech amid the Missouri v. Biden case over alleged collusion between the federal government and social media companies to censor speech in violation of the First Amendment. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified that his agency does not meet with social media companies “for the purpose of instructing them to take down content.”

Rep. Jim Jordan

Email Suggests DHS Requested Creation of ‘Disinformation’ Group, GOP-Led House Report Finds

Email Suggests DHS Requested Creation of 'Disinformation' Group, GOP-Led House Report Finds

Censorship

Congress

Department of Homeland Security

House Republicans

Jim Jordan

Politics

In a viral video, a Columbia University professor blasted university presidents, including his own, for their cowardice in not making Jewish students feel safe on their campuses.
“Please take out your phones because I want this message to get to every parent who sent their kids to Columbia University and trusted their kids and their children’s safety with us,” Professor Shai Davidai of the Columbia Business School told the assembled students. “I want this message to get to parent in America who sends their kids to NYU, to Harvard, to Stanford, to Berkeley. And I want you to know one thing – we cannot protect your child.”
“I am Israeli, but before all of that, I am a dad,” he continued. “I have two beautiful children and I’m talking to you; I speaking to you as a dad and I want you to know, we cannot protect your children from pro-terrorist student organizations because the president of Columbia University will not speak out against pro-terror student organizations. Because the president of Harvard University, because the president of Stanford, because the president of Berkeley – they will not speak out against pro-terror student organizations.”
He spoke of his 7-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, pointing out that the terrorist group Hamas views them as “legitimate targets of resistance.” “That is what they are selling: you are allowed to murder and kidnap my 2-year-old daughter in the name of ‘resistance.’ And none of the presidents of universities all around the country are willing to take a stand. This is what cowards do and I’ll name it now: President Minouche Shafik of Columbia University, you are a coward,” he charged.
He warned parents of every religious affiliation: “I’m telling every parent in the United States, it does not matter if you’re Jewish or Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or an atheist… rape is never ok. Not as an act of resistance, not as an act of revenge. Rape is never ok. And if my amazing 2-year-old daughter were now 18 years old, I would never, never send her to Columbia. … because I know that she will not be protected here.”
“We would never allow, never allow the KKK to march at our campus,” he declared. “We would never allow an ISIS demonstration on our campus. Can you imagine in the city which had to endure 9/11, the worst attack on American soil, can you imagine that here we have pro-terror student organizations?”
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“So what I want you to do now is I want you to go on social media,” he instructed the students. “I want you to put this video online. I want this to get to every parent, every concerned mom, every concerned dad in and around the United States. And I want you all, tomorrow morning to call your kid’s college, your kid’s university and ask them one simple question: Will you protect my child from pro-terror student organizations?”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
To the presidents of <a href="https://twitter.com/Columbia?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Columbia</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/nyuniversity?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nyuniversity</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/Harvard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Harvard</a> and other universities who have stood SILENT as terror supporters have marched through campus and celebrated raping women, executing children and kidnapping grandmothers, you are cowards. 
Listen to Columbia Professor and… <a href="https://t.co/PoTXnAWZtp">pic.twitter.com/PoTXnAWZtp</a>
&mdash; Israel ישראל (@Israel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1715052107072496005?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 19, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

US-ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-PROTEST

‘Cowards’: Columbia U Prof Goes Viral Blasting Colleges’ Silence On ‘Pro-Terror Student Organizations’

Columbia University

Harvard University

New York University

Terrorism

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/harvard" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Harvard</a> is the worst university in America when it comes to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/free-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">free speech</a>, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). 
The <a href="https://rankings.thefire.org/rank" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> ranked 248 college campuses nationwide, analyzing factors from speech codes to reactions to guest speakers. It included a survey of roughly 55,000 college students. Harvard, one of the nation’s top law schools, scored a zero out of 100, the lowest score ever recorded, according to FIRE. 
“Each year, the climate on college campuses grows more inhospitable to free speech,” <a href="https://www.thefire.org/news/new-2024-college-free-speech-rankings-show-alarming-81-success-rate-deplatforming-attempts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> FIRE Director of Polling and Analytics Sean Stevens. “Some of the most prestigious universities in our country have the most repressive administrations. Students should know that a college degree at certain schools may come at the expense of their free speech rights.”
Harvard’s speech climate was ranked as “abysmal” after FIRE surveyed more than 200 students about their experience at the Ivy League School. One student from the class of 2023 reportedly <a href="https://rankings.thefire.org/rank">said</a> that they were required to start every class stating their pronouns, while another said they were afraid to be open about their opinions. 
“I often avoid posting controversial takes on social media tied to my name because I am afraid that they might be misconstrued by my classmates or admin,” a student from the class of 2024 reportedly said. 
Other schools joining Harvard at the bottom of the free speech rankings included the University of Texas (Austin), Dartmouth College, Duquesne University, Northwestern University, Skidmore College, Fordham University, Georgetown University, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Pennsylvania.
According to the survey, up to 72% of all students surveyed said conservative speakers should not be welcome on campus. Stanford University, where a Trump-appointed judge was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-president-law-school-dean-apologize-to-judge-after-verbal-assault-on-campus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shouted down</a> by students earlier this year while attempting to deliver a speech on campus, ranked 207 out of 248 overall, and 237 for disruptive conduct. 
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The best schools, according to the survey, were Michigan Technological University, Auburn University, the University of New Hampshire, Oregon State University, Florida State University, the University of Virginia, Texas A&amp;M University, George Mason University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Colorado Boulder. 
“We are very pleased to see that a number of university presidents are taking the issue of freedom of speech and academic freedom seriously by signing on to free speech initiatives,” said FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff. “However, they have a long way to go toward restoring public trust. After all, an environment in which you can actually get in trouble for the ‘wrong’ academic opinion is not one that can be depended upon to produce reliable knowledge. It’s especially disturbing that some of the worst performing institutions are among America’s most influential schools, including Harvard, Georgetown, Northwestern and Dartmouth.”

Dunster House dormitory with clock tower, Harvard University

‘Abysmal’: Harvard Places Dead Last In Annual College Free Speech Rankings

Harvard Places Dead Last In Annual College Free Speech Rankings

Education

Free Speech

Harvard

A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/u-s-house-of-representatives" target="_blank" rel="noopener">House</a> committee investigating how social media companies restricted speech is putting <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/stanford-university" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stanford University</a> on notice.
Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/jim-jordan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Jordan</a> (R-OH), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, says Stanford failed to comply with an April subpoena seeking information about its Internet Observatory program, The Daily Wire can reveal.
In a <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/649991316/Stanford-Letter-Jordan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter dated Thursday</a>, Jordan told a lawyer representing Stanford that the university now has until June 14 to comply, or his committee will &#8220;be forced to consider the use of one or more enforcement mechanisms.&#8221;
The GOP-led panel has <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/06/house-panel-contempt-efforts/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a number of options</a> it could explore, including criminal contempt of Congress, civil enforcement, or &#8220;inherent contempt.&#8221;
Projects of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which was <a href="https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/background-sios-projects-social-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">founded in 2019</a>, attracted scrutiny amid disclosures from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-twitter-files-twitter-and-the-fbi-belly-button" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter Files</a>, raising concerns among Republicans about Big Tech censorship.
As Jordan noted in his letter, SIO is a member of two organizations that use the Jira Ticketing System to flag &#8220;alleged mis- and disinformation,&#8221; including posts regarding the 2020 election and COVID vaccines.
&#8220;Public and non-public information obtained by the Committee confirms that large social media companies moderated content based upon these tickets and other information shared by Stanford personnel,&#8221; Jordan wrote.
Jordan said that his committee wants to see &#8220;all Jira tickets and related communications to social media companies, which document purportedly false content posted online.&#8221;
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The chairman&#8217;s subpoena also demands communications between SIO and the Executive Branch related to content moderation dating back to January 2020 and documents about grants, contracts, and funds from the federal government <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/03/23/house-weaponization-subcommittee-seeks-records-universities">dating back</a> to January 2015.
<a href="https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/background-sios-projects-social-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">On its website</a>, SIO pushes back on &#8220;inaccurate and misleading&#8221; claims about two coalitions it helped to convene. These groups are the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) and Virality Project (VP), both of which are mentioned by Jordan in his letter Thursday.
SIO lists a series of details concerning the censorship of certain types of online posts and targeting conservative social media accounts. &#8220;The EIP and VP provided public factual findings to multiple entities, including government agencies and social media platforms, but had no control over content moderation, censorship, or labeling posts,&#8221; SIO says.
The Stanford program insists on its website that the only government funding that it has received came in the form of a five-year, $748,437 grant from the National Science Foundation, but stressed that no government money was used to study the 2020 election or to support the COVID vaccine-focused VP.
Jordan said the lawyer representing Stanford, John Bellinger III of Arnold &amp; Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, &#8220;confirmed&#8221; to committee staff in a recent call that the university has documents and communications related to the Jira tickets, but would not be producing them to the panel.
&#8220;You have represented that the basis for your refusal is that these documents and communications concern only a research project conducted by Stanford students,&#8221; Jordan wrote. &#8220;This description is inconsistent with information obtained by the Committee and available in the public domain, which suggests that the government and large social media platforms initiated and received information via these relevant documents.&#8221;
The Daily Wire reached out to Bellinger and Stanford seeking comment.

Jordan Threatens Subpoena Enforcement Against Stanford In Censorship Probe

The Stanford Law diversity dean who helped protesters shut down a speech by a conservative judge comes from a privileged family and is following in the footsteps of her mother &#8211;who once ran training sessions that accused Buddhists of being &#8220;too white.&#8221;
The Daily Wire reported this week that Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirian Steinbach spoke last year at a “grieving session” for a transgender student who committed suicide and then turned the floor over to her mother, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-stanford-laws-diversity-dean-protesters-poached-their-trans-martyr-from-federalist-society" target="_blank" rel="noopener">compared the student favorably to 9/11 hijackers</a>, claiming that neither felt listened to.
Steinbach’s mother is Sala Steinbach, who was originally Marilyn Steinbach but took the alternate name after embracing Buddhism in the 1990s, and quickly began running radical Critical Race Theory sessions that posited that western Buddhism was too white and full of racists.
The dean’s father is Alan Steinbach, a chemistry professor who held a prestigious position at the Marine Biological Laboratory just off of Martha’s Vineyard, where a pleasure boat was registered in Sala’s name, according to public records reviewed by The Daily Wire.
He inherited that position from his father, Henry Burr Steinbach, a University of Chicago professor who led the laboratory in addition to being assistant director of the National Science Foundation, director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and president of the American Society of Zoologists and the Society for General Physiologists, according to his obituary in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/24/obituaries/henry-b-steinbach-professor-of-biology-and-director-of-lab.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times</a>.
When she was known as Marilyn, Steinbach&#8217;s mother lived a charmed live, <a href="https://academeblog.org/2018/01/14/mlk-j-b-s-call-and-the-march-for-jobs-and-freedom/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cavorting in Paris</a> as a young woman who aspired to be a dancer. In 1963, she went to a Paris cafe where she later described people “sitting around drinking café lattes and discussing the March on Washington” and decided to go back to America to listen to Martin Luther King’s speech. She went to Skidmore College and joined the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). She met her husband when he placed a call from his graduate school looking for a way to transport busloads of students to a protest of the Vietnam war, Tirien wrote in 2018.
Sala’s maritime life off of Martha’s Vineyard instilled in her a love of nature, which then led her to Buddhism.
“My spiritual home is Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. It’s a place with deep dharma practice, beautiful gardens, acres of flowers and vegetables,” she <a href="https://archive.ph/d7rOw">wrote</a> in 1996.
But there was also a problem: Like her daughter, Buddhists in America were mostly white.
“As an institution, Green Gulch is passionately involved with ecology. The people there are, with some exceptions, European Americans. I want them to care for and work for the health and beauty and safety of human diversity as passionately as they do for biodiversity,” she wrote.
<div id="attachment_537361" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-537361" class="size-medium wp-image-537361" src="https://dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/alan-steinbach-300x194.png" alt="Alan Steinbach, father of Stanford Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach. Marine Biological Laboratory screenshot" width="300" height="194" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-300x194.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-891x576.png 891w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-768x496.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-1536x993.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-2048x1324.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Alan Steinbach, the father of Stanford Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach. Marine Biological Laboratory screenshot</div>
She began running hardcore Critical Race Theory exercises on San Francisco Buddhists, ordering them to stand on opposite corners of the room depending on their identity politics group, and then hurl out invectives against the others, asking questions like, “When you were a child, what were you told about the group across from you? &#8230; What are some of the names used to refer to that other group?”
She teamed up with a white Buddhist to work on an anti-racist project, before accusing that woman of being a racist. “You and I are in deep trouble… You don’t know the power of ‘Whiteness,’” Sala <a href="https://inquiringmind.com/article/1202_14_gates_alchemy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Barbara Gates, her would-be collaborator, Gates wrote. “I don’t want to be alone in these conversations in case someone—probably in all innocence—expresses unexamined racism that might be hurtful to me.”
When Dean Steinbach brought her mother to an event marking the life of a transgender student who had committed suicide, Sala drew on her Buddhist beliefs, saying a monk had told her the day after the September 11, 2001 attacks that “I don’t know what those men were thinking, but I know that no one was listening to them, or at least they felt that way,” and that the same applied to the student, according to Federalist Society chapter president Tim Rosenberg, who attended the event. The transgender student was in fact a member of the conservative group, but the dean later sided with students protesting it, purportedly for being a threat to transgender lives.
Like her mother, Dean Steinbach combined her privilege and tantial grip on an “oppressed” identity to make a career out of calling out hidden bigotry in the most unlikely of places—in her case, the elite campus of America’s top-ranked law school, in uber-liberal Palo Alto.
Despite only one of her four grandparents being fully black, the dean’s diversity job resting on a resume that included serving as vice president of the Law Students of African Descent. “In 2017, she launched the Coalition for Equity and Inclusion in Law (CCEIL), a Bay Area regional cohort of law and policy organizations dedicated to advancing greater cultural equity, inclusion, and diversity in the sector,” her Stanford <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/directory/tirien-steinbach/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">biography</a> says.
Fighting for the oppressed was lucrative work. In the year ending March 2021, she made $253,000 for working 38 hours a week as the chief program officer for the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Northern California, according to <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/940279770/202230319349301623/full" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tax filings</a>. Three months later, she took the job at Stanford, which presumably came with a pay increase.
Steinbach did not return a request for comment.
Part 1: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-stanford-laws-diversity-dean-protesters-poached-their-trans-martyr-from-federalist-society">How Stanford Law’s ‘Diversity Dean,’ Protesters Poached Their Trans Martyr From Federalist Society</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meet-the-seattle-schools-woke-indoctrination-czar-who-married-a-child-molester">Meet The Seattle Schools Woke Indoctrination Czar Who Married A Child Molester</a>

US_Navy_040221-N-2899A-003_Rear_Adm._Ann_E._Rondeau_salutes_the_National_Ensign_after_presenting_it_to_Sala_Marilyn_Steinbach,_daughter_of_William_Sylvester_White

Stanford Law’s ‘Diversity Dean’ Who Lectured Judge Grew Up In Wealth, Privilege

Stanford Law's 'Diversity Dean' Who Lectured Judge Grew Up In Wealth, Privilege

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Lawfare

Readers Pass

When Stanford Law <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-traumatized-students-can-seek-mental-health-support-from-dean-who-ruined-judges-visit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">protesters</a> accused the school&#8217;s Federalist Society chapter last month of putting LGBTQ lives in danger by inviting a conservative judge to speak, they cited the suicide of a transgender classmate last year. What they didn&#8217;t mention was that the student they held up as a martyr was a member of the conservative group and counted many fellow members as friends.
Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach infamously took protesters’ side, telling Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan that he posed “harm” to trans people. But Steinbach was well aware that Dylan Simmons, Stanford’s most visible, and now deceased, transgender law student, had been a member of the conservative group she demonized, the law school&#8217;s Federalist Society President Tim Rosenberger told The Daily Wire.
Simmons <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-lawyer/articles/dylan-simmons-js-22-ba-ma-17-1994-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">died</a> January 20, 2022 after becoming isolated and depressed during coronavirus lockdowns, Rosenberger said. Born a female in China and then adopted by a family in Texas, Simmons began identifying as a male at age 20 and majored in gender studies. As a law student, Simmons was active in identity politics groups, but also held conservative views.
After Simmons&#8217; death, Steinbach &#8220;was the main driver&#8221; in planning a “grieving session” that devolved into a left-wing rally in which Steinbach’s mother likened the dead student to the September 11 hijackers, Rosenberger said.
More than a year later, during the March 9 Federalist Society event with Duncan, leftist students attacked conservative jurisprudence as a threat to LGBTQ people and brandished signs accusing the society of causing trans suicide. To people outside of Stanford, it was a standard accusation of “transphobia” made against conservatives. But to Simmons&#8217; Federalist Society friends, it took on a sinister brazenness.
“Certainly the implication was that we were responsible” for their member&#8217;s death, said Rosenberger, who himself is openly gay.
On April 9, a month after the protest, OutLaw—a group of radical gender activists at the law school—released a statement attempting to justify its disruption of the event.
“We must say aloud what so many have failed to recognize: Our community is still healing from the loss of Dylan Simmons, one of our most beloved and most visible trans members, last year,&#8221; the statement read. &#8220;This grief runs deep. Healing is not linear. And our wounds are opened again and again as our community weathers relentless attacks on our lives.”
Members of OutLaw may not have known much about Simmons, who once gifted the Federalist Society chapter an autographed copy of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s autobiography. Records provided to The Daily Wire by the national Federalist Society group show that Simmons paid dues on January 7, 2021.
But Steinbach was very familiar with Simmons&#8217; sad saga. Although she had only been working at the law school for <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/press/tirien-angela-steinbach-joins-stanford-law-school-as-associate-dean-for-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">about 6 months </a>when Simmons died, she played a key role in planning the “grieving session” for Simmons, Rosenberger said.  The session was initially to take place during a meeting of the Federalist Society, prompting Rosenberger to ask that it be rescheduled.
Steinbach claimed to have been close to Simmons—though she also seemed to know little about the student&#8217;s religious or political views, Rosenberger said. The service she planned took several bizarre twists, some which seemed to underscore that its real purpose was to push leftist politics, not mark a life lost.
Rosenberger recalled a black preacher who was invited to give Simmons&#8217; eulogy telling mourners that &#8220;we don&#8217;t know&#8221; what Simmons thought of the afterlife, then recommending they read a book called &#8220;Grieving While Black&#8221;&#8211;even though none of the students in attendance were black.
“Dylan was a confirmed member of the Methodist church. What he thought of the afterlife wasn’t some unknowable fact,” Rosenberger said.
The strangest moment, according to Rosenberger, came when Steinbach told the gathering she was &#8220;so overcome with grief that I can barely function, so I asked my mom to come with me and say a few words.&#8221;
Steinbach’s mother acknowledged never having met Simmons, but said that, &#8220;I feel like I knew him because my daughter was so close to him,&#8221; Rosenberger said.
She said she had been thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who was exiled from Vietnam after refusing to choose sides in the war against communism and who went on to found monasteries and retreats in the West, including in Berkeley, California. According to Rosenberg, she said she spoke to Hanh on September 12, 2001, the day after terrorists killed 3,000 Americans, “and he said ‘I don’t know what those men were thinking, but I know that no one was listening to them, or at least they felt that way.’”
The session did not lessen Rosenberger’s grief.
“So she’s comparing Dylan to the 9/11 hijackers? And favorably?” he said. “Now I was sort of pissed off.”
Neither Steinbach nor her mother returned requests for comment.
The fact that Simmons, who at the time may have been Stanford Law’s only openly transgender student, was a member of the conservative group “was sort of scrubbed” to advance identity politics, he said.
<div id="attachment_537405" style="width: 236px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-537405" class="size-medium wp-image-537405" src="https://dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-226x300.png" alt="A flier posted on Stanford Law's campus by the group Outlaw. Courtesy the Federalist Society" width="226" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-226x300.png 226w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-435x576.png 435w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-768x1018.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier.png 1026w" sizes="(max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" />A flier posted on Stanford Law&#8217;s campus by the group Outlaw. Courtesy the Federalist Society</div>
Last month&#8217;s incident involving Judge Duncan catapulted Steinbach into international headlines. Stanford’s president and law school dean later <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-president-law-school-dean-apologize-to-judge-after-verbal-assault-on-campus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">apologized</a> to Duncan and placed Steinbach on leave, but Steinbach penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal without permission that doubled down on her rhetoric.
In the April 9 statement from OutLaw, the radical activist group expressed &#8220;our profound gratitude for a community leader who has done more than any other to make this place safe and accepting: Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach.&#8221;
Read Part 2,<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-laws-diversity-dean-who-lectured-judge-grew-up-in-wealth-privilege"> Stanford Law&#8217;s &#8216;Diversity Dean&#8217; Who Lectured Judge Grew Up In Wealth, Privilege,</a> to hear how in between boating off Martha&#8217;s Vineyard, the dean’s mom ran struggle sessions accusing Buddhism of being too white.

Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirian Steinbach. Center for Ethics and Public Policy screenshot

How Stanford Law’s ‘Diversity Dean,’ Protesters Poached Their Trans Martyr From Federalist Society

How Stanford Law's 'Diversity Dean,' Protesters Poached Their Trans Martyr From Federalist Society

Access to <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/artificial-intelligence?_gl=1*trajdu*_ga*NzUzNDA5ODIxLjE2NzkzMjkzNzM.*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTY4MjQ1MDk3Mi4xNDMuMS4xNjgyNDU1Mjg0LjU5LjAuMA.." target="_blank" rel="noopener">artificial intelligence</a> rendered workers in a customer support setting 14% more <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/business" target="_blank" rel="noopener">efficient</a>, according to a new working <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31161/w31161.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paper</a> from Stanford University and MIT researchers.
The findings come as ChatGPT, an AI language processing tool, accrues worldwide recognition as knowledge workers leverage the system’s capabilities to execute tasks such as writing emails and fixing computer code in a matter of seconds. The academics showed that customer service employees at an unnamed Fortune 500 software company who had access to a tool based on a version of GPT answered more customer requests in the same amount of time as their colleagues who did not have access to the system.
“Access to the tool increases productivity, as measured by issues resolved per hour, by 14% on average, with the greatest impact on novice and low-skilled workers, and minimal impact on experienced and highly skilled workers,” the working paper said. “We provide suggestive evidence that the AI model disseminates the potentially tacit knowledge of more able workers and helps newer workers move down the experience curve.”
The researchers indeed found that newer and less skilled workers saw significant productivity gains, while their more experienced colleagues saw minimal improvement from the technology. The tool, which monitored customer chats and provided agents with real-time suggestions on how to respond, was “designed to augment agents,” who remained responsible for the conversation and were able to ignore the suggestions from the system.
Employees who used the AI tool saw a “decline in the time” necessary to handle an individual customer chat and an increased capacity to handle multiple chats at once, as well as a “small increase” in the portion of customer requests successfully resolved. Workers who had two months of tenure and access to the system typically performed as well as agents with six months of tenure and no access to the system.
“We posit that high-skill workers may have less to gain from AI assistance precisely because AI recommendations capture the potentially tacit knowledge embodied in their own behaviors. Rather, low-skill workers are more likely to improve by incorporating these behaviors by adhering to AI suggestions,” the researchers added. “Instead, using textual analysis, we find suggestive evidence that AI assistance leads lower-skill agents to communicate more like high-skill agents.”
The study comes as technology firms otherwise battered by recent economic tumult have seen mass market AI as a possible windfall in recent months amid drastic increase in demand for the systems among knowledge workers. Microsoft, which invested billions of dollars into ChatGPT creator OpenAI, recently announced that the system would be <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/microsoft-unveils-new-version-of-bing-powered-by-artificial-intelligence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">integrated</a> into search engine Bing and internet browser Edge, allowing users to locate information more easily. Google <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/google-search-will-soon-receive-ai-upgrade-as-company-scrambles-to-release-chatgpt-competitor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed</a> one day earlier that Bard, an experimental conversational AI service, would soon be added to the company’s search engine, which has dominated competitors for two decades.
Amazon, which released several mass-market AI solutions earlier this month, similarly found that coders who used AI computer programming tool CodeWhisperer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/amazon-jumps-into-commercial-ai-race-with-multiple-competitors-to-chatgpt" target="_blank" rel="noopener">completed</a> tasks 57% faster and were 27% more likely to achieve success than those who did not use the system, which can generate real-time code suggestions.
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The implications of widespread AI adoption, beyond the increase in employee efficiency, could produce considerable technological unemployment: Goldman Sachs noted in a recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/colossal-share-of-american-jobs-could-be-replaced-by-ai-new-report-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> that mass market AI systems could have “potentially large macroeconomic effects” and produce “significant disruption” in worldwide labor markets, affecting as many as 7% of positions in the United States, especially in sectors reliant upon office work.

Customer Service

Here’s How Much More Efficient AI Makes The Average Worker: Study

Here’s How Much More Efficient AI Makes The Average Worker

Artificial Intelligence

Business

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Technology

<a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/stanford" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stanford</a> University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne vowed on Monday to protect <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/free-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">free speech</a> and open expression after Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was verbally accosted by student protesters and a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-dei" target="_blank" rel="noopener">diversity</a> administrator.
Duncan, a Trump appointee, was invited last month to deliver <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-law-sides-with-howling-mob-of-spoiled-brats-in-shameful-treatment-of-federal-judge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">remarks</a> at an event hosted by the school’s Federalist Society chapter but was shouted down by leftist protesters who called the federal judge a “liar” and “scumbag.” When he called for a school administrator to defuse the incident, Stanford Law School Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach added to the students’ complaints by lecturing Duncan and claiming he was fomenting “division.”
Tessier-Lavigne, who previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-president-law-school-dean-apologize-to-judge-after-verbal-assault-on-campus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">offered</a> an apology to Duncan and asserted that Steinbach’s monologue did not reflect school policy on safeguarding free expression, said in a <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/04/03/welcome-spring-quarter-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> to Stanford employees and students that administrators would introduce new initiatives to “strengthen the norms and values that support a robust learning community at Stanford.”
“Universities are called on to be places of vigorous and thoughtful inquiry, not only of ideas palatable to the mainstream, but of a broad array of ideas, including challenges to mainstream views. Our role is to provide knowledge, nuance, and an approach based in truth-seeking and reasoned discussion,” Tessier-Lavigne wrote. “But we will only be able to achieve that goal, I believe, if we approach new ideas and perspectives with curiosity, and with respect for the dignity of each member of our community. This includes assuming good intent in the people one disagrees with and giving them grace.”
The administrator told students and staff members that the new free expression initiatives would apply to “classrooms, residences, and offices” and will be shared with future applicants who consider Stanford. “As we enter the final quarter of this academic year, let us recommit ourselves to rising above the lowest-common-denominator discourse,” he continued. “Let us aspire to open, curious, and reasoned engagement with one another.”
The additional vow to protect free speech came days after Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho and Eleventh Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch announced that they would no longer <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/stanford-law-added-to-clerk-hire-boycott-by-us-judges-ho-branch" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hire</a> any clerks who chose to attend Stanford Law School in reaction to the response to Duncan. Both judges, also Trump appointees, had previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-says-he-wont-hire-clerks-from-yale-law-urges-other-judges-to-join" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that they would no longer hire from Yale Law School over similar concerns.
“My concern is how law students are treating everyone else they disagree with. I’m concerned about what this is doing to the legal profession and to our country,” Ho said in a <a href="https://freebeacon.com/campus/read-judge-james-hos-remarks-announcing-a-hiring-boycott-from-stanford-law-school/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speech</a> for the Texas Review of Law and Politics. “Students learn all the wrong lessons. They practice all the wrong tactics. And then they graduate and bring these tactics to workplaces across the country. What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. And it’s tearing our country apart.”
Duncan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/it-is-not-free-speech-to-silence-others-judge-kyle-duncan-speaks-out-about-mob-crashing-his-stanford-law-school-talk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reacted</a> to the Stanford debacle in a speech at the University of Notre Dame. He contended that the student hecklers were engaged in activity that “had nothing to do with our proud American tradition of free speech” but was “rather a parody of it.”
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“It had everything to do with intimidation. And to be clear, not intimidating me,” he continued. “I’m not intimidated by this. I’m a life-tenured judge. I’m going to go back to my court and keep writing opinions. No, the target of the intimidation was the protesters’ fellow students.”

Stanford President Vows To Protect Free Speech After Federal Judge Shouted Down By Leftist Students And DEI Czar

Stanford President Vows To Protect Free Speech After Federal Judge Shouted Down By Leftist Students

College

Palo Alto

Stanford University&#8217;s move to put Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-law-school-dean-doubles-down-on-free-speech-diversity-dean-placed-on-leave" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on leave</a> was a step in the right direction after she brazenly attacked U.S. Court of Appeals Judge for the Fifth Circuit Kyle Duncan for nearly eight minutes. Dean Steinbach had a fundamental responsibility as an administrator to uphold the university&#8217;s ideals, including its unwavering commitment to free speech and independent thought.
Although the university&#8217;s response sends a clear message that such behavior from an administrator will not be tolerated, it falls short of addressing the larger issue plaguing college campuses across the nation. By allowing students to evade accountability for their own misconduct, Stanford condones the self-righteous student mobs asserting that only their viewpoints are valid.
For nearly 15 years, Campus Reform has been relentlessly exposing the disturbing trend on college campuses that aims to suppress free speech and critical thinking, despite the fact that these institutions were once revered as the foremost champions of these values.
In the late 80s, colleges began to push speech codes, but these restrictions were widely expanded in the 2000s and continue to <a href="https://campusreform.org/article?id=21038" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rise</a> each year. In addition to these codes, students, faculty, and administrators organized and collaborated to <a href="https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=11835" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ban</a> influential figures from campuses whose messages deviated from the mob — particularly conservative speakers. Because of the minimal resistance from most colleges, the students discovered that the louder and more aggressive they become, the more likely administrators would <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biggest-scandal-higher-education-lowering-bar" target="_blank" rel="noopener">surrender</a> to their demands.
As these totalitarian efforts increased, so has anti-American sentiment on college campuses and reasonable positions are demonized. The effort to rewrite our history is fueling this anti-Americanism causing many students to have little regard for the concepts of liberty, including the First Amendment. Consider these numbers:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/poll-majority-of-americans-want-first-amendment-rewritten/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Polls</a> show more than 60% of Americans approve of restricting speech and 51% want to change the First Amendment</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Almost 60% of individuals between the ages of 21 and 38 say that the Constitution, “goes too far in allowing hate speech in modern America,” and 54% said violators of “hate speech” should face jail time</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/majority-of-students-favor-college-bans-of-hurtful-or-offensive-speech" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> that more than 50% of students want to see educational institutions restrict “intolerant opinions”</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A recent Gallup poll <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/394202/record-low-extremely-proud-american.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shows</a> only 38% of people are extremely proud to be Americans</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2019/01/27/socialism-capitalism-poll-generation-z-preference" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> 61% of those between the ages of 18 to 24 have a positive view of socialism, and 55% of women would rather live in a socialist country</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Washington Post/University of Maryland <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/democracy-poll/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> found that 36% of Americans are not proud of how democracy works in the United States</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">70% of millennials <a href="https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2019-annual-poll/">say</a> they are likely to vote socialist</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Only 57% of millennials believe that the Declaration of Independence provides more freedom and equality than the Communist Manifesto</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">1 in 3 millennials has a favorable view of communism</li>
</ul>
To address these pressing issues, colleges must adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards those who undermine free speech and critical thinking. It is imperative that these institutions take a proactive and comprehensive approach to confront this problem directly.
I am proud to say my students have never stooped to such disgraceful behavior. In my 17 years of teaching, my students have been exemplary in their graciousness and attentiveness towards speakers. When Economist Paul Krugman gave a lecture at the college, I encouraged my students to attend despite my fundamental disagreement with his views. Many did and they showed him the utmost respect. I wouldn’t have tolerated anything else and that’s the standard educators like me and Dean Steinbach must set for students.
Although protests can be a powerful means of expressing dissent, any student who is unable to maintain civility and self-control, particularly towards visiting speakers, does not possess the maturity required for a college education. Moreover, if faculty members and administrators endorse or participate in such behavior, they are unfit to continue serving on college campuses. To restore colleges to their former status as hubs of free speech and critical thinking, it is essential to establish accountability and take decisive action to address this issue.
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<a href="https://www.campusreform.org/profile?pid=5457422" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nicholas Giordano</a> is a political science professor at Suffolk Community College and a Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform Higher Education Fellow.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Stanford Main Quad

Stanford’s Handling Of DEI Dean Is A Microcosm Of A Much Larger Problem In Higher Education

Protests

Social Issues

Universities

Federal judge Kyle Duncan spoke about the recent debacle he suffered during a talk at Stanford University.
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/notre-dame-university" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Notre Dame</a>&#8216;s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government hosted a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A7W4OiN4Rs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lecture</a> from Duncan Friday. The speech was about his lecture at <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-president-law-school-dean-apologize-to-judge-after-verbal-assault-on-campus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stanford Law School</a> earlier this month, when he was shouted down by students and an administrator. Duncan spoke about the consequences and ramifications of free speech that the Stanford debacle highlighted.
“The importance of today’s event I think really needs no explanation,” Notre Dame professor Philip Munoz said while introducing Duncan. “What happened two weeks ago at Stanford Law School raises fundamental questions about free speech and our liberal democracy and how healthy our free speech culture is … especially at our nation’s elite schools.” Munoz also noted that members of the Stanford Federalist Society were watching the lecture virtually.
Duncan began his talk by praising the enduring tradition of free speech, including student protests. “[America is] a great country, where you can harshly criticize federal judges and nothing bad will happen to you,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You might even get praised or promoted. &#8230; The students at Stanford and other elite law schools swim in an ocean of free speech.&#8221;
“But make no mistake, what went on in that classroom on March the ninth had nothing to do with our proud American tradition of free speech,&#8221; Duncan noted. &#8220;It was rather a parody of it.”
“It is not free speech to silence others because you hate them,&#8221; Duncan continued. &#8220;It is not free speech to jeer and heckle a speaker who has been invited to your school so that he can’t deliver a talk. It is not free speech to form a mob and hurl taunts and threats that aren’t worthy of being written on the wall of a public toilet. It is not free speech to pretend to be harmed by words or ideas you disagree with, and then use that feigned harm as a license to deny a speaker the most rudimentary forms of civility.&#8221;
Duncan rebuked the idea that the hecklers were engaging in &#8220;counter speech,&#8221; or participating in the &#8220;marketplace of ideas.&#8221;
&#8220;Counter speech means offering a reasoned response to an argument,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It doesn’t mean screaming ‘Shut up, you scum we hate you,’ at a distance of 12 feet. &#8230; The marketplace of ideas describes a free and fair competition among opposing arguments, with the most compelling one, we hope, emerging on the top. What transpired at Stanford was no marketplace. It was more like a flash mob on a shoplifting spree.”
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Duncan said the mob had no intention of engaging with his ideas. “[T]he mob had no interest in my talk at all,” the judge remarked. “They were there to heckle and to cheer and to shame. Let’s say the quiet part out loud: The mob came to target me because they hate my work and my ideas.”
The protest had nothing to do with free speech, he concluded. “It had everything to do with intimidation. And to be clear, not intimidating me. I’m not intimidated by this. I’m a life-tenured judge. I’m going to go back to my court and keep writing opinions. No, the target of the intimidation was the protesters’ fellow students.&#8221;

‘It Is Not Free Speech To Silence Others’: Judge Kyle Duncan Speaks Out About Mob Crashing His Stanford Law School Talk

'It Is Not Free Speech To Silence Others': Judge Kyle Duncan Speaks Out About Mob Crashing His Stanford Law School Talk

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Notre Dame University

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