At Stanford, Public Accountability for Thee But Not for Me

Stanford Law School debate has moved beyond the question of whether these students should be punished for their outrageous behavior. They won’t, the school has stated.

We now debate the appropriateness of conservative students who were on the receiving end if the vitriol they used to express their displeasure at the school and their classmates in the media.

Stanford administrators believe this PR nightmare will end if everyone, including Federalist Society students who were targeted by the activists, shuts up and takes it on the chin.

Administration aims to manage the operation as an abusive parent would. Don’t tell anyone about how you got that bump!

Perhaps most outrageous is an email sent Tuesday from Federalist Society faculty adviser Michael McConnell—the lone conservative on the Stanford Law School faculty—to the student group’s members urging them, in their interactions with the press, “not to speak out of anger and not to exacerbate the already tense situation.”

“Many in the media would like nothing better than to find sources and quotes that are inflammatory on one side or the other. This is not in your interest, and it is not in the long-term interest of the chapter at Stanford—nor of Stanford as an institution,” McConnell wrote. “In particular, I have heard that some outlets wish to obtain names and likenesses of protesting students. I suggest not cooperating with any such efforts.” With friends like this!

We are not sure why members of the school’s Federalist Society chapter should cover up the misconduct of their peers or the administrators who worked with them. However, such a cover-up would not be in the best interest of the institution or the legal systems it purports to serve.

McConnell stated that he stands behind his recommendations regarding press engagement, but declined to answer questions about possible consequences for the mob which shut down the event.

The school’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild—the organizing force behind the Maoist horde of would-be lawyers—papered the hallways prior to Judge Duncan’s arrival with the names and photographs of the Federalist Society’s board members.

But when? Free Beacon Aaron Sibarium, Aaron Sibarium’s reporter, quoted board members from the group describing the protests. “Stanford Law School at its best,” After we named the board members, Lily Bou wrote a letter requesting that we remove her name from those of her classmates. “You do not have our permission to reference or quote any portion of this email in a future piece.”

This is not how the First Amendment works.

We’ve gotten similar complaints about publishing images—pulled from social media—of Stanford Law School dean Jenny Martinez’s classroom, which protesters covered end to end in flyers after she issued an apology to Judge Duncan.

Mary Cate Hickman wrote us the following note. She identified herself as a second year law student and described herself on LinkedIn as “a second-year lawyer.” “passionate about social justice” And a Sorbonne graduate.

Hickman demanded that “anonymize the face of the student in the red hoodie” Because “California is a two-party consent state, and you have no right to publish this student’s identity/likeness/face without consent.”

California is a consent state with two parties to the recording Oral communications, not photographs, and even that only pertains to situations in which there is a presumption of privacy—that is, not a law school classroom in which student activists are snapping photographs and posting them to Instagram. Hickman did no respond to a request to comment.

It is clear that Stanford law students are not the frontrunners of an anti Constitutional revolution. However, it is evident from the drama in Palo Alto. Stanford has failed to teach them the limits of privacy, and the rights to a free press. We will try to fill that void by continuing to report on this horrible affair.