This autumn, George Washington University Law School students will register for classes with one major exception: they won't be able to take a lecture with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as they have for the previous 11 years.After a campaign to have Justice Thomas barred from teaching at the university, his name was taken off the roster of lecturers. Thomas, who is 74 years old and facing a period filled with important decisions, hardly needs the annoyance of such protests. His departure (even if temporary) is a huge loss for the law school, the students, and free speech.
Justice Thomas (and his wife) were accused of "actively putting thousands of students on our campus in danger" in a petition. The recent Roe v. Wade ruling, which opponents claimed "stripped the right to bodily autonomy of persons with wombs," served as the campaign's obvious inspiration. They urged faculty and students to "throw Clarence Thomas out of Foggy Bottom."Anti-Justice Thomas demonstrations were anticipated.
The campaign went on and demonstrations were anticipated in the fall even though the university declined to fire Thomas. Even while many people now perceive the resignation as a victory, it is merely the most recent instance of how dissident perspectives are routinely suppressed in higher education.Indeed, there is no better example of this contrast than the welcoming of recently departed Justice Stephen Breyer to the Harvard Law faculty. There are none. No campaign cancellation due to his liberal choices.
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It will be intriguing to see Breyer go back to Harvard, where he studied and even taught. On a faculty where the political spectrum is generally from the left to the far left, this liberal icon might suddenly be seen as a virtual moderate.
According to a recent survey report by The Harvard Crimson, 82.46 percent of faculty respondents describe themselves as "liberal" or "extremely liberal." 16.08 percent of respondents said they were "moderate," while just 1.46 percent said they were "conservative." There were no "extremely conservative" faculty members, but the number of "very liberal" faculty members rose by about 8% in a single year.campaigns that are canceled use two tactics
Thomas' departure fits into a long history of campaigns being abandoned, which frequently take two paths. They first ask for the dismissal of professors who hold divergent opinions. However, it could be more challenging for a university to fire tenured or well-known individuals. Few of us thought that a sitting justice of the Supreme Court would be prohibited from instructing at the law school.
These efforts attempt to persuade targeted to resign by making their continued presence on campus unbearable if termination is not achievable.
A recent Georgetown University campaign was successful in getting a law professor to quit. Ilya Shapiro, the director of the Center for the Constitution, was demoted due to a single contentious tweet. Even though Shapiro was exonerated following a protracted investigation, the law school's lackluster support made it plain that he couldn't hope for much of a future there.
Even professors with tenure have a limit. Joseph Manson, a professor of anthropology at UCLA, recently announced his resignation after proclaiming higher education a lost cause due to the faculty's oppressive degree of orthodoxy. Manson stated how his coworkers did nothing as dissenting faculty members were repeatedly insulted and shunned.
"U.S. higher education is morally and intellectually corrupt, beyond the possibility of self-repair, and therefore no longer a viable place in which to invest my time and effort," he concluded after spending decades as a teacher.
Don't blame the justices for acting as you would expect them to; the Supreme Court needs a "structural correction." Change the selection process.
Justice Thomas' decision may not have been influenced by the campaign to cancel, but the possibility of protests scheduled for the fall cannot have helped. It is obvious that his departure will probably encourage further initiatives to exclude and demonize people who hold different opinions.
For instance, Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pennsylvania, recently accused me of manipulating the law for "wrongful goals" after I questioned the legal foundation for former President Donald Trump's first impeachment in her commencement address at George Washington University. The assertion that served as the foundation for her claim was one that even her Democratic colleagues disputed during the hearing. The fact that what Rep. Wild told our grads was false in every way was just irrelevant. To persistently attack and ultimately tire people who have different viewpoints is the goal.
Many academic members who express dissenting opinions on topics including impeachment, diversity initiatives, police brutality, transgender identification, immunizations, and native land recognition now routinely face such attacks.
In fact, Dr. Kristin Collier, a medical professor at the University of Michigan, experienced a similar assault on Sunday at a ceremony of introduction. Because she is against legalized abortion, about half of the entering medical school class left a white coat ceremony. Even though she had no intention of talking about abortion, the simple fact that she opposes it made her speaking at the occasion undesirable.
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Justice Thomas, who combines a famous career with one of the most inspirational life stories in the history of the court, taught at George Washington University Law School for more than ten years, and the students at the school profited significantly from his instruction. Regardless of the cause of his retirement from teaching, he is deserving of our gratitude.
He deserved better as well. He deserved more outspoken backing from academic members. Students needed to understand him better. He was entitled to an equally vociferous oppositional effort in favor of free speech and a range of opinions at the university.
However, staff and students are now overwhelmingly afraid that they might be the next person singled out in a campaign to cancel classes or shunned by peers. Everything that gives intellectuals significance, including access to classes, conferences, and publications, is under attack from these campaigns.
As the mob follows their coworkers, many people decide to keep quiet. The setting is ideal for those who have been labeled as dissenters in Robespierre. Abbe Sieyes, a leader of the French Revolution who was later thought to be an independent thinker, captured this spirit.
He responded, "I kept alive," when asked what he had done throughout the Reign of Terror.
Jonathan Turley is a member of the Board of Contributors for USA TODAY and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Twitter handle to follow is @JonathanTurley.
Originally published on USA TODAY, this article says: Clarence Thomas encountered cancel culture at George Washington Law. He has now moved aside.
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