TIM ROSENBERGER: It’s horrifying my school, Stanford Law, is training America’s future fascists 

Tim Rosenberger graduated from Georgetown University and is completing a JD/MBA at Stanford University, where he is president of the Federalist Society.

As Judge Kyle Duncan and I entered the Stanford Law conference room, a crowd surrounded us, forming a gauntlet. Some members of the horde had painted their faces. Others were screaming like crazy. Someone shouted that they expected the judge’s daughters to be raped.

The swarm followed us into the room, which was already filled with photographs of members of the Stanford Federalist Society. The signs accused us of provoking trans suicide.

A trans member of our chapter and a friend of mine committed suicide last year, which makes these posters particularly cruel.

Frankly, his vulgar antics were to be expected.

As president of the Stanford Federalist Society, I have grown accustomed to the unhinged vitriol faced by conservatives on college campuses. But what really struck me about this wild group of demonic students was that Stanford University was complicit in organizing and implicitly condoning their behavior.

Today, nearly two weeks after Stanford became a national symbol of the insanity infecting America’s universities, the administration has done almost nothing to punish this anti-free speech gang, nor has it taken any action. significant to prevent them from attacking again.

I think Stanford University was delighted that Judge Duncan was silenced. The students were just doing their dirty work.

The Federalist Society had invited Judge Duncan to give a speech on ‘Guns, COVID and Twitter’. But the protesters were primarily concerned with only one of Judge Duncan’s decisions.

In 2020, she denied the appeal of a transgender inmate, who was suing to force the government to remove her male birth name from official documents and instead use a new name, Kathrine Nicole Jett.

Prior to Jett’s gender transition, she had pleaded guilty to attempted receipt of child pornography and was sentenced to 180 months in prison and 15 years of supervised release, in part, due to prior convictions for possession of child pornography and failure to register. as a sex offender. .

Jett is not a likable character, but nevertheless, the students and the school decided to organize their protest against an alleged violation of their rights.

I introduced the judge, quickly going through my notes as if filming a hostage video, as the crowd yelled at me.

When the judge tried to speak, the intruders interrupted his speech, repeatedly, for more than 10 minutes.

One of the five administrators in the room, the DEI dean of the law school, walked forward, I presumed to put down the riot. Surprisingly, the students immediately started yelling for him to be allowed to speak.

They started yelling that she was ‘administrator’ and ‘dean’. When these assertions of power failed to convince the judge to leave the podium, they began yelling that the judge needed to “respect black women” and that her “racism” was being “shown.”

His support for the dean was well placed. After usurping the podium, he did not denounce the outbursts but delivered a lengthy prepared speech in which he accused the judge of causing harm and asked, as if concerned about his free speech, whether “it’s worth squeezing the juice.”

The crowd responded to this speech in a devilish chorus by snapping their fingers instead of applauding. The room remained raucous. The judge was not yet able to give his speech.

Another administrator approached the leader of the crowd and muttered something. He then stood up and ordered half of the students to ‘leave the room in protest’ while the other half stayed.

A stream of people clattered out, but the most disruptive agitators remained.

The event ended early and Federal Marshalls escorted me and the judge out of the room.

Since then, I have received supportive emails from professors and attorneys across the country.

I am amazed at how many of these emails draw parallels between this incident and the protests that rocked college campuses in the 1960s. People remember how university administrations called in the National Guard to arrest those who occupied the offices of presidents. and clashed with law enforcement.

But these writers seem to have overlooked a crucial difference. In the 1960s, students protested against power structures. Today’s students protest alongside them.

Stanford students had a chance to take on power during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, they meekly accepted the end of in-person instruction for the better part of a year, killing all social life. They accepted the application of deeply authoritarian and unscientific policies that affected every aspect of the student experience.

Students failed to support courageous professors like Dr. Scott Atlas or Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who warned of the real damage caused by prolonged lockdowns. They did not support their classmates who opposed the university’s overly restrictive vaccination requirements.

I initially found it curious that a group of students so easily intimidated in front of the administration would suddenly find the strength to charge a federal judge with racism and trans genocide. I have now realized that these students worked in concert with the administration.

Stanford doesn’t want speakers like Judge Duncan to appear on its campus. His positions and ideas are unpopular with most Stanford staff and students. So the administrators, along with the students, made the event as uncomfortable as possible.

Most alarmingly, the student foot soldiers who were recruited in this effort are among the nation’s future lawyers and judges. In fact, Stanford is training a generation of fascists, all too willing to side with the majority to silence the minority.

These students were not defending the weak, they were acting on behalf of the strong.

Stanford may say the right things about free speech and the mob may take a backseat for a moment, but administrators and students will work behind the scenes to quash views they disagree with.

If Stanford Law does not take a clear and forceful stand against this totalitarian instinct, then this great institution will be exposed as nothing more than a training ground for authoritarians.