Law Schools

UChicago Law Responds To Race-Baiting Student Event With 'Fine People On Both Sides' Schtick

How could a law school screw this up? Pretty easily actually.

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When the Edmund Burke Society of the University of Chicago Law School announced an upcoming “debate” about immigration that amounted to little more than a bundle of racist stereotypes and a rank misunderstanding of basic immigration law, an administration statement was sure to follow. With the Department of Justice making no secret of its initiative to hassle schools that refuse to hand blank checks to junior varsity hate groups, the school didn’t have a lot of leeway to react to these shameful antics, but they could at least denounce the language in the harshest terms and express support for the rest of their diverse student body.

Somehow, the school managed to botch even this. Here are some snippets from the statement from Dean Tom Miles. The whole statement is available here:

This week’s events are concerning because they do not reflect the best that I know our students can be or the values of our Law School and University. We aspire to welcome people of all backgrounds. We are committed to free expression and inquiry. We are a community of passionate individuals, conducting serious academic inquiry, and working to make each other smarter and better through rigorous debate.

That could not be more mealy-mouthed if he’d really wrote the words, “there are some very fine people on both sides.” If labeling America as the “porcelain receptacle” of immigrants only amounts to “not reflect[ing] the best” of the University of Chicago, then maybe the debate topic — “Resolved: Raise the Bar” — should properly address the law school’s values.

Whenever this sort of thing crops up at a school, someone evokes and subsequently mangles the concept of academic freedom. Miles continues:

The mission of the Law School is to investigate important questions facing the legal system, questions that are difficult and often uncomfortable. This mission is best advanced in an environment of inclusion.

Which important legal question is advanced by talking about Chinese immigrants as chasing fortune cookies? See, that’s where this statement really falls off the rails. Reading the above passage in a vacuum makes an excellent case for shutting down this event and penalizing the Edmund Burke Society for making a mockery of academic inquiry — taking an important subject and burying its important legal questions under a bunch of broad stereotypes in an affirmative assault on the environment of inclusion. There are colorable arguments for restricting immigration — this memo even mentions some, such as wage depression, as afterthoughts to its insults — but this debate isn’t fulfilling the described mission of the school as is. However, somehow, this official statement seems aimed at prescribing propriety and civility to everyone but the Edmund Burke Society:

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I am heartened that many of the responses to this week’s events have modeled the values of reasoned discourse.

Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about the responses and be more disheartened by the events themselves.

One other line of note…

Our commitment to free expression requires that we allow uncivil speech, but it does not require that we celebrate it.

It is not required, but the University of Chicago Law School went ahead and celebrates it anyway.

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Days before the controversy arose, the school’s official Twitter account promoted one of the event’s organizers on his TV appearance:

This prompted this dead-on response of a Tweet, written after this week’s controversy:

https://twitter.com/AllezLesBoulez/status/959916849600266240

Over the weekend, a law professor who previously worked at the University of Chicago reached out to me to suggest that my prior post should have focused more directly on the Edmund Burke students as opposed to lumping the whole school into the discussion. It’s a fair point — my personal approach has generally been to not name law students (in searchable ways) to allow them the freedom to outgrow their misdeeds in school, but that does result in the school bearing the brunt of the notoriety for individual student actions. And there is a compelling argument here for not letting a school be judged by its worst. The school itself is not complicit in planning this event.

And then the school goes around, fully aware of the controversy the group seeks to stir, like a giddy child promoting the Edmund Burke Society’s Chair, Eric Wessan, for getting a TV spot, that’s when the school does become complicit in this. No one is suggesting that Chicago can punish students for parading around as the League of Extraordinary Douchebags, but this is the school going out and trading on the group’s infamy.

That’s on the school.

(Read the full Dean Miles statement on the next page…)

[UPDATE: An earlier version of this article suggested that Chicago promoted Wessan’s appearance after it was already aware of this immigration debate. The core point — that the administration invested itself in students posing as heroes for pushing vile content — is not changed, but the school did NOT send this out AFTER this specific incident. Still, other students have sent me prior Edmund Burke event descriptions so… it’s not like this one should’ve been a shock to the administration. Indeed, it’s that reputation that made him newsworthy for the TV invite.]

Earlier: You Should Absolutely Read This Insane Law School Event Promo Calling Immigrants Toilet People

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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