Ilya Shapiro spoke out against racism in a tweet, and this week the Dean at Georgetown law school placed him on administrative leave, pending further investigation. The decision is disgraceful.
During the 2020 Democratic primaries, Joe Biden was granted the endorsement of South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, in a quid pro quo exchange for Biden’s promise to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. Many previous Supreme Court nominations have considered the political advantages of potential nominees’ home state or region, ethnicity, religion, sex, race, or other biographical elements. Never before has a President announced such a narrow rule about who would be considered.
While reasonable people can differ, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 76% of Americans agree that Biden “should consider all possible nominees” rather than “only nominees who are Black women.” Those who disagree with Biden’s limit include 54% of Democrats and 72% of nonwhite Americans.
Ilya Shapiro, who was slated to join Georgetown Law as a senior lecturer on Feb. 1, agrees with the American majority. This is no surprise. He headed the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. As Cato’s Executive Vice President David Boaz has long made clear, Cato hires on merit alone. Thus, all Cato’s employees—whatever their race, sex, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or other identity—know that they were chosen because they were the best candidates for the job, and not because of favoritism. . . .
Georgetown Law’s Dean, William Treanor, issued a statement denouncing Shapiro. Treanor claimed that Shapiro had suggested that “the best Supreme Court nominee could not be a Black woman.” This is true only in the sense that Shapiro was explicitly discussing a 2022 nomination by a Democratic President, and since Shapiro thinks Sri Srinivasan is the “best” nominee for a Democratic President, then the “best” nominee could not be a black woman, a white man, a Native American, or anyone else.
In fact, Shapiro has said that the best nominee for the Supreme Court could be a black woman—namely D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown. In a 2016 event at the University of Chicago Law School, he listed Judge Brown as among several he would consider nominating, if he had the power. Judge Brown, who retired from the D.C. Circuit in 2017, is perhaps even more distinguished that Judge Srinivasan. She joined the D.C. Circuit in 2005, having served since 1996 on the California Supreme Court, and before that in several high-level legal roles in the California state government. But she is an originalist and therefore anathema to Biden, who led a filibuster against her nomination to the D.C. Circuit. When President Bush was considering nominating Brown to be the first black female Supreme Court Justice, Biden specifically threatened to filibuster her, and her alone.
On Monday, Dean Treanor placed Shapiro on administrative leave, citing the “pain and outrage” of Georgetown’s black students, professors, staff, and alumni. He added, “Ilya Shapiro’s tweets are antithetical to the work that we do here every day to build inclusion, belonging, and respect for diversity.”
The Dean’s statement is true if “inclusion, belonging, and respect for diversity” means that racial preferences may never be criticized. Some people who favor racial preferences, or perceive themselves has having benefited from such preferences, are outraged at criticism of racial discrimination. However, law schools are supposed to be places where all ideas can be debated logically. Lawyers who cannot bear to hear ideas they don’t like will be poor advocates for their clients in our adversarial legal system, and professors who can’t tolerate criticism of their own ideology are poor role models for students.
The only actual principle involved here is that Georgetown will not tolerate disagreement with the Democrat/Lefty narrative of the moment.
It’s a disgrace.
Plus: “Students considering which law school to attend might have more confidence in a school whose dean has never libeled anyone. Donors to any law school might consider the state of the school’s academic freedom.”