How Should Law Schools Handle Protests at Student Events?

March 07, 2023 1 min read

by Jonathan H. Adler
The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason Magazine

Excerpt: As readers doubtless know, last week, student protestors disrupted a lecture by Judge Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit at Stanford Law School (SLS). Judge Duncan had been invited to deliver remarks by the SLS chapter of the Federalist Society, and although the chapter is a recognized student organization at SLS, it was not able to proceed with the event as planned.

As SLS Dean Jenny Martinex and Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne have acknowledged, school administrators did not handle the situation well. But what should SLS have done? What should other schools do if they are concerned about disruptive protests at events?


Leave a comment


Also in National Free Speech News & Commentary

Cornell Cut Classes by a Pro-Palestinian Professor After an Israeli Student’s Discrimination Complaint

September 29, 2025 1 min read

Gabe Levin
The Nation 

Excerpt: Dr. Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American studies at Cornell, said the university has canceled the two classes he was set to teach this semester. It comes as the provost is recommending that he be suspended for two semesters without pay on the grounds that he violated federal antidiscrimination laws, The Nation has learned.

Cheyfitz’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said it’s the latest turn in months of investigations—carried out by different university bodies—into whether Cheyfitz, 84, told a graduate student last semester to drop a class he was teaching about Gaza because the student is Israeli. Cheyfitz, who is Jewish and whose daughter and grandchildren live in Israel, denies the allegation.

Read More
She Was Fired for a Comment on Her Private Facebook Account

September 29, 2025 1 min read

Sabrina Tavernise
New York Times

Excerpt: Two days after Charlie Kirk was killed, Suzanne Swierc, an employee at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., woke up to a cascade of missed calls, texts and voice mail messages from numbers she did not know.

Ms. Swierc (pronounced swirtz) discovered that the barrage stemmed from something she had posted on Facebook the day before: “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” Her Facebook settings were private, but one of her followers must have taken a screen shot and sent it on without her knowledge.

Read More
The Truth Behind Harvard’s Ideological Imbalance

September 24, 2025 1 min read

Henry F. Haidar 
Harvard Crimson 

Excerpt: Out of all the faculty The Crimson recently surveyed, only one percent described their political beliefs as very conservative. Think about that: someone is three times more likely to get into Harvard than to encounter a conservative faculty member here. 

Much can be — and has been — said in favor of viewpoint diversity in higher education. Yet those decrying the relative lack of conservative faculty overlooks a basic point: The structure of universities themselves lends itself to a professoriate whose politics do not perfectly map on to that of the public writ large. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Read More