Conservative Law School Freaks Out When Students Want To Talk About Diversity

I guess forcing institutions of higher learning to unequivocally value every opinion no matter how offensive ends when someone suggests the legal field needs more people of color.

Laptop in classic libraryTo hear the trends pages tell it — let alone the shady hidden camera folks — liberal college campuses are waging an all-out assault on free speech because they stack the faculty with socialists who don’t grant gold stars to kids for being insensitive jerks. It’s as though they don’t reward intellectual laziness. The nerve! When you hang around a college campus or talk to rank-and-file professors, there are certainly individual excesses to be found, but the free speech “crisis” narrative is a tempest in a teapot hyped up by a melange of middle aged op-ed columnists hoping to boost circulation by casting aspersions on “The Kids These Days!” and right-wingers trying to trash higher education for churning out all those people who believe in evolution and stuff.

Which is why it’s entertaining when the free speech shoe is on the other foot and a conservative institution loses its mind over the mere mention of diversity. I guess forcing institutions of higher learning to unequivocally value every opinion no matter how offensive ends when someone suggests the legal field needs more people of color.

A couple years ago, students at notoriously right-wing Chapman Law School proposed a new journal:

With the prospective title Chapman Law School Diversity and Practice Journal, the students got letters of endorsement from various progressive law groups across Orange County, including the local chapters of the Hispanic Bar, Lavender Bar and Thurgood Marshall Bar associations. They presented their efforts to the law school’s curriculum committee, which must sign off on any journal proposals in order for the publication to be affiliated with Chapman.

Needless to say, the school said no. This isn’t, in itself, all that crazy. Journals cost money and the school may not have seen the value in adding another expense. But when the students suggested that they could successfully publish the journal without the school’s help, the school demanded that the journal could in no way be identified with the school. This also is a completely fair restriction because the school shouldn’t be identified with anything not underneath its roof. But taken together, if the journal could financially make it on its own, then why not bring it in-house? Unless the mere mention of a diverse practice is somehow hive-inducing to the faculty.

The Diversity Initiative has doubled down. They got over 250 surveys of fellow law students supporting the journal idea, whose title has now switched to Law Journal of Social Justice. The Diversity Initiative also began a scholarship, organized a diversity day, and planned the Social Justice summit. With all that in place, they resubmitted the plan for the journal, this time including a letter of support from Chapman Chancellor Daniele C. Struppa, who is slated to become the university’s president when longtime head Jim Doti steps down this year. In addition, Struppa vowed to match the Diversity Initiative’s scholarship fund up to $25,000, and has already committed $5,000.

The faculty is considering the journal again and planning to vote in April.

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Now, Chapman has every right to say no to this initiative. It’s under no obligation to support a new journal. Sure, it’s stupid and probably racist to shut out this journal, but it’s entirely within its rights to choose whether its academic path should include a progressive-leaning journal. And students have every right to troll them for not endorsing the journal. That’s how this works.

Why Chapman Law School So Scared Of Its Progressive Students? [OC Weekly]

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