“Heckler’s Veto” at Stanford Law School

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Elan Journo discuss the heckling and public shaming of Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan by Stanford Law School (SLS) students and the school’s associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at a Federalist Society (FedSoc) event. Ghate and Journo delve into the viral video of the event, Stanford’s letter apologizing to the judge, and the philosophic implications of both.

Among the topics covered:
• How the “heckling incident” at SLS provides a window on DEI ideology on campuses;
• How the Stanford associate dean’s remarks at the event represent the way DEI ideology functions as a religious orthodoxy;
• How DEI ideology treats subjective feelings of harm as though they were objective rights violations;
• Why DEI ideology is incompatible with the requirements of university education;
• How Stanford’s apology letter defends free speech and apologizes to the judge;
• How the apology letter shows that DEI orthodoxy is incompatible with viewpoint diversity;
• SLS’s plan to hold sessions presenting the current laws on free speech while welcoming dissenting perspectives on those laws;
• How to evaluate the judge’s conduct within the context of this controversy.

Mentioned in this podcast and relevant to the discussion are the video (https://vimeo.com/806801455) of the incident and the subsequent letter (https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/u...) from the dean of the SLS.

The podcast was recorded on March 31, 2023.


0:00:00 Introduction
0:00:46 “Heckling incident” and DEI ideology
0:14:15 DEI as a religious orthodoxy
0:25:15 Feelings of harms vs. rights violations
0:36:34 University ed requirements and DEI
0:48:45 Stanford’s apology letter and free speech
0:57:20 Viewpoint diversity
1:10:35 Sessions on the current laws
1:17:05 Evaluating the judge’s conduct