On the heels of a report in the Brown University student newspaper about students suffering emotional breakdowns because schoolwork is interfering with their political activism (including, of course, bashing Israel) comes a claim that conservative law students at Georgetown University were “traumatized” by an email from Georgetown law professor Gary Peller criticizing the record of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. (He was responding to emails praising Scalia, a Georgetown alumnus, from the main university and the law school.)
Peller said that the former justice “was not a legal figure to be lionized or emulated by our students. He bullied lawyers, trafficked in personal humiliation of advocates and openly sided with the party of intolerance in the ‘culture wars’ he often invoked. In my mind, he was not a ‘giant’ in any good sense.”
A harsh opinion, yes. But well within the bounds of a lively exchange of views, and certainly nothing that should cause emotional damage to a mature law student.
However two other Georgetown professors, Randy Barnett and Nick Rosenkranz, responded with an email of their own:
Although this email was upsetting to us, we could only imagine what it was like for these students. Some of them are twenty-two-year-old 1Ls, less than six months into their legal education. But we did not have to wait long to find out. Leaders of the Federalist Society chapter and of the student Republicans reached out to us to tell us how traumatized, hurt, shaken and angry were their fellow students. Of particular concern to them were the students who are in Professor Peller’s class who must now attend class knowing of his contempt for Justice Scalia and his admirers, including them. How are they now to participate freely in class? What reasoning would be deemed acceptable on their exams?
If there were evidence that Professor Peller’s views on jurisprudence affected his treatment of students with differing views, I would think that would have emerged by now.
I hope these “traumatized” students won’t demand “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” like some of their leftwing counterparts.
