BY JENNIFER RUTH

Inside Higher Ed covers a story today that blew up over the weekend. That is, it “blew up” in a particular way in particular outlets. I found out about it quickly only because I look at the twitter accounts of those on the right who believe that institutions of higher ed are “irredeemable” and must be abandoned for new institutions like University of Austin or hostilely taken over like Florida’s New College. Within hours of the events at Stanford Law School on Thursday, a version of them had been reported by National Review, Fox News, The Daily Mail, and so on. By Sunday, conservative pundit Rod Dreher had gained an “exclusive” by interviewing Judge Duncan, a central figure in the events, on his Substack. Here’s how Dreher opened his piece:

It was a revolt of the elites, a pogrom against free speech and civil discourse carried out by some of the nation’s most privileged. It was a scene from Dostoevsky’s political novel Demons played out in one of America’s most exclusive training schools for its legal ruling class. And it is a stark warning about the potentially totalitarian future of the US.

Rod Dreher is in Hungary on a fellowship and recently wrote “Florida’s Orban Renewal Project” for The American Conservative in which he argued that mimicking Orban was a “feature not a bug” of DeSantis’s plans for education.

Dreher has the libertarians to thank for creating an opening for his particular strain of spin. The libertarian Koch network underwrote a media culture in which both sidesism and false equivalences became second nature, whether the topic was climate change (see here) or campus speech (see here). In “Did the Libertarians Open the Door to the Authoritarians?”, I wondered whether this laid the groundwork for the authoritarianism we now see in Florida and elsewhere (by authoritarian, I mean state suppression of civil liberties and state control of knowledge). By seizing on and amplifying any story featuring left students protesting, libertarian-funded media outlets handed social conservatives the vehicle they intend to ride to the White House in 2024. We are under attack. We are the victims. The liberal elite have captured all our institutions — the media, education, corporations — so now we must use the power of the government to fight back.

So what happened at Stanford Law School on Thursday? Here’s what I gather, though I have the same limited knowledge everyone else has and could be wrong in particulars. (The key for me, here, is how incredibly quickly some right-wing outlets mobilize to shape public perception, when they, too, have only very limited knowledge.) Stanford’s Federalist Society, a conservative law student group, invited Trump-appointee fifth circuit judge Kyle Duncan to speak. In IHE, Scott Jaschik (who has been doing excellent reporting lately on the AP African-American Studies course and other casualties of the right-wing culture wars) explained that Duncan “has a history of anti-LGBT activism. He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court against the constitutionality of same-sex marriage and led efforts to defend state bans on same-sex marriage.” Students who disagreed with giving Duncan space on campus asked FedSoc to move his talk off campus or to put it on Zoom. FedSoc refused. According to the Stanford Daily, a  law school student coalition composed of Identity and Rights Affirmers for Trans Equality (IRATE) and organization Outlaw organized people to protest the talk. When the protestors made it impossible for Duncan to begin, he asked for an administrator to intervene. Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach came to the front. “I’d like to help,” she says; “Can I help?” “I have prepared remarks but they are not letting me,” Duncan says. “I want you to be able to give your prepared remarks,” Steinbach says. For the next nine minutes or so, Steinbach does a remarkable job clearing the way for Duncan while– no, in fact, by– addressing the very real concerns the students have and that all of us should have in situations such as the one in question in which it might appear that universities are normalizing a dehumanizing far-right political agenda. Here is some of what she said:

For many people in this law school who work here, who study here, and who live here, your advocacy, your opinions from the bench land as absolute disenfranchisement of their rights . . . In my role at this university, my job is to create a space of belonging for all people in this institution and it’s hard and messy and not easy and the answers are not black or white or right or wrong. This is actually part of the creation of belonging and it doesn’t feel comfortable and it doesn’t always feel safe . . . I really do wholeheartedly welcome you [Steinbach speaks directly to Duncan] because me and many people in this administration do absolutely believe in free speech . . . Thank you [said directly to the audience] for protecting the free speech that we value here of our speakers and our protesters . . ..

The only way to ask the students to stop heckling was to first admit that she understood why it felt unacceptable to them that the university would allow a person who denied their reality on campus to air his views. This, to me, was a particularly brilliant point Steinbach made:

I want to remind you all of one thing: I chose to be here today. You all chose to be here today. Many people go before Judge Duncan who do not necessarily choose to be there and they have to listen to everything he says, literally thousands of people. You have a choice. You do not need to stay here if this is not where you want to be.

The students got it. The organizer of the protest stood up and asked half of the dissenting students to leave and half to stay but to allow Duncan to give his remarks. Steinbach had succeeded, it seemed at first, in walking a treacherous line and opening up a seemingly impossible space. That some students continued to heckle cannot be laid at her feet, though it has been–and by her own administration who, after Duncan (backed by FIRE) demanded an apology, said: “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.” What would they have had her do exactly? Threaten the students who continued to heckle (or should we say, rather, “continued to struggle,” as this is the moment we’re in — one in which civil-rights struggles need to be fought anew) with expulsion? She defended the humanity of the students while seeking to ensure the event succeeded in going forward. In doing so, she handled the situation with integrity and that the Stanford administration does not acknowledge this in their apology is deeply disappointing. They forfeited an important opportunity to point out the asymmetry of a political campaign that has made universities its bad-faith centerpiece.

In his “exclusive” interview with Duncan, Dreher asks if Duncan feared for his safety at any point. Duncan answers, “It was a deeply unpleasant experience, but, no, I didn’t fear for my safety. We haven’t reached the point (yet?) where the kind of vicious invective thrown around thoughtlessly by coddled law students portends real violence.” The vicious invective thrown out about “groomers” and “woke zealots” has, on the other hand, issued in real violence and this violence is on the rise. This is precisely why the so-called coddled students were there to protest dehumanizing rhetoric in the spaces where they live and learn.

There is a lot more to say. The mocking way the right-wing press wrote about Associate Dean Steinbach is particularly troubling. “Her voice could be heard trembling at certain points, although it’s unclear whether she was upset at Duncan, or just excited at having the chance to perform,” the Daily Mail wrote. Her job is to make sure marginalized students feel that they belong on the campus and the idea that she’s at the event because she’s attention-seeking is rich. There is a lot more, also, to unpack regarding what Steinbach said. She chose her words carefully. For now, though, I am well over my word count.

Jennifer Ruth is a contributing editor for Academe Blog and the author, with Michael Bérubé, of It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (2022).