In one more sign that conservatives have taken charge of the narrative and are winning the controversy over the March 10 protest at a Federalist Society-hosted debate on civil liberties at Yale Law School—an important inflection point in the ongoing debate about freedom of speech and whether it is being stifled on elite college campuses—last week, 1,400 conservative lawmakers and public figures, including academics, wrote a letter to Heather Gerken, the dean of Yale Law School, asking for the protesters to be punished and the school to amend its original statement saying that the event had not been seriously disrupted.
The letter to Dean Gerken includes signatures from Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, as well as nine members of the House of Representatives and the governors of Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. It urges the school to punish the “threatening and violent behavior” directed at the speakers, who, as I reported in a Q&A with one of them last week, were escorted out of the event by police.
Ok, you could legitimately ask: Who really cares what Ted Cruz thinks? (I did ask YLS for a response as to what they think, but, as of publication, I am waiting on an answer.)
But at Yale Law School specifically, there’s a paradox at play that makes what happens there especially critical in the larger culture wars.