Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford Law dean Jenny Martinez issued an apology to Judge Kyle Duncan, after students walked out and protested during his visit on March 9.
Duncan is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and was invited by the school’s Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian law student group. The event was titled, “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter.”
As Duncan spoke during the event, student protesters “booed and made various loud comments,” reported The Stanford Daily, the university’s newspaper.
The Daily also reported that students put fliers up before the event, which called the judge a “right-wing advocate for laws that would harm women, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people.”
Outlaw, an LGBTQ+ student group, lead the protesters because they were upset he was invited to speak.
“We write to apologize for the disruption of your recent speech at Stanford Law School,” Lavigne and Martinez wrote in their apology letter. “As has already been communicated to our community, what happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech and we are very sorry about the experience you had while visiting our campus.”
The letter states that the school’s disruption policy says students are not allowed to “prevent the effective carrying out of a ‘public event’ whether by heckling or other forms of interruption.”
The apology letter came out just a few days after Duncan commented on the event in an interview with Reuters.
Reuters reported, “he was ‘offended’ and ‘disturbed’ by the ‘deeply uncivil behavior’ of the students who derailed a speech he was set to deliver, as well as that of a law school administrator who he says ‘attacked’ him in her introductory remarks.”
A video posted by the TikTok account @constitutionalaw shows Duncan frustrated and calling a student an “appalling idiot.”
In an opinion piece titled “My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School” published by the Wall Street Journal, Duncan shares his experience that day.
“When I arrived, the walls were festooned with posters denouncing me for crimes against women, gays, blacks and ‘trans people.’ Plastered everywhere were photos of the students who had invited me and fliers declaring ‘You should be ASHAMED,’ with the last word in large red capital letters and a horror-movie font. This didn’t seem ‘collegial.’ Walking to the building where I would deliver my talk, I could hear loud chanting a good 50 yards away, reminiscent of a tent revival in its intensity. Some 100 students were massed outside the classroom as I entered, faces painted every color of the rainbow, waving signs and banners, jeering and stamping and howling. As I entered the classroom, one protester screamed: ‘We hope your daughters get raped!'”
He concludes by admitting he called students, “appalling idiots,” “bullies” and “hypocrites.”
“They are, and I won’t apologize for saying so. Sometimes anger is the proper response to vicious behavior,” he concluded in his opinion piece.
After the apology, hundreds of student protesters wearing masks and all-black attire crowded the hallways outside of Dean Martinez’s classroom. The masks said, “counter-speech is free speech.”
When she entered her room, she discovered her whiteboard plastered with posters that defended the student protestors and mocked Duncan. The flyers supported the assertion made by student activists and some administrators that disrupting Duncan’s lecture constituted an exercise of free speech.
Editors note: The story will continue to be updated as more information comes out. The last update was made on March 21.
