We’d like to think that Yale Law School would be above the usual petty political crap, because, well, it’s Yale.
Alas, even the highest institutions of higher learning have been infected by woke intellectual rot.
In an eye-opening and infuriating thread — as well as an article — the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium details the hell one Yale Law student was put through by the administration all because of an email he sent inviting students to a mixer cohosted by the Native American Law Students Association and — gasp! — the Federalist Society:
Administrators at Yale Law School spent weeks pressuring a student to apologize for a "triggering" email he sent out. Part of what made the email "triggering," the administrators told the student, was his membership in a conservative organization. 🧵https://t.co/iJigk63LFe
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
The second-year law student, a member of both the Native American Law Students Association and the conservative Federalist Society, had invited classmates to an event cohosted by the two groups. Here is what the student wrote in an email to the Native American listserv: pic.twitter.com/4UTQz5AqGL
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
The student is part Cherokee, the Indian tribe that was forcibly displaced during the infamous Trail of Tears.
Within minutes, the email elicited furious accusations of racism from his classmates, several of whom alleged that the term "trap house" indicated a blackface party.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
"I guess celebrating whiteness wasn’t enough," the president of the Black Law Students Association wrote. "Y’all had to upgrade to cosplay/black face." She also objected to the mixer’s affiliation with the Federalist Society, which she said "supported anti-Black rhetoric."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
"Trap house" has been part of progressive pop culture since 2016, when "Chapo Trap House" burst onto the scene. Hosted by three white men, the socialist podcast has received sympathetic profiles in the NYT, the New Yorker, and the Guardian, none of which take issue with the name.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Just 12 hours after the email went out, the student was summoned to the law school’s Office of Student Affairs, which administrators said had received nine discrimination and harassment complaints about his message.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
The administrators should have dismissed those complaints as meritless.
Instead, they did this:
At the Sept. 16 meeting—which you can listen to below—associate dean Ellen Cosgrove and diversity director Yaseen Eldik told the student that the word "trap" connotes crack use, hip hop, and blackface.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Those "triggering associations," Eldik said, were "compounded by the fried chicken reference," which "is often used to undermine arguments that structural and systemic racism has contributed to racial health disparities in the U.S." See the 3:40 mark: https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Eldik, a former Obama White House official, went on to say that the email's association with the Federalist Society was "very triggering for students who already feel like Fedsoc" is "oppressive to certain communities."
That's at the 5:32 mark.https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Eldik added: "That of course obviously includes the LGBTQIA community and black communities and immigrant communities."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
The statement signals that administrators at the country’s top-ranked law school now regard membership in mainstream conservative circles as a legitimate object of offense—and as potential grounds for discipline. Ironically, Fedsoc grew out of a conference hosted at Yale Law.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
A wider embrace of the stance conveyed by the Yale Law officials would effectively suppress—with the threat of disciplinary action—views and associations that have until now been commonplace in elite legal circles. Note that all 6 conservative SCOTUS justices have ties to Fedsoc.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Behind closed doors, the leaked audio suggests, campus diversity bureaucracies are less ecumenical than their public messaging lets on: Their goal isn’t to make universities more inclusive, but rather to wield the threat of exclusion against disfavored groups.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Disfavored groups … like conservatives.
Throughout the Sept. 16 meeting and a subsequent conversation the next day, Eldik and Cosgrove hinted repeatedly that the student might face consequences if he didn’t apologize—including trouble with the bar exam’s "character and fitness" investigations.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Those investigations review aspiring lawyers' disciplinary records in considerable detail: The NY State Bar, for example, asks law schools to describe any "discreditable information" that might bear upon an "applicant’s character," even if it did not result in formal discipline.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
That may have been what Eldik had in mind when he told the student: "I worry about this leaning over your reputation as a person—not just here but when you leave. You know the legal community is a small one."
That's at 15:10 of the audio.https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Is that a threat? Because it sounds like one.
The best way to "make this go away," he continued, would be to formally apologize to Yale’s Black Law Students Association.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
"You’re a law student, and there’s a bar you have to take," Eldik said in a follow-up meeting on Sept. 17. "So we think it’s really important to give you a 360 view." See the second recording here: https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
When the student resisted, saying he’d prefer to have a face-to-face discussion with anybody offended by his email, Eldik nonetheless drafted an apology for the student to send in the service of "character-driven rehabilitation."
That's at 14:32: https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Addressed to black student leaders, the note included an apology for "any harm, trauma, or upset" the initial email may have caused. "I know I must learn more and grow," the draft apology concluded, "[a]nd I will actively educate myself so I can do better."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
The student ultimately declined to send the note, instead telling his classmates that he welcomed conversations with anybody offended by his email.
When the student hadn’t apologized by the evening of Sept. 16, Eldik and Cosgrove emailed his entire class about the incident.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
That student did the right thing. The administration is another story entirely.
"[A]n invitation was recently circulated containing pejorative and racist language," the email read. "We condemn this in the strongest possible terms" and "are working on addressing this."
Eldik, Cosgrove, and YLS dean Heather Gerken did not respond to requests for comment.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Dubious discrimination complaints are nothing new at the Ivy League law school. In February, for example, a raft of affinity groups accused the Yale Law Journal of systematically excluding black students from the masthead. https://t.co/HXTq0hUYFD
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
When the prestigious publication released its admissions data, it turned out that black students had been admitted at a rate of 61 percent—far higher than the rate for any other race or ethnicity.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
But as "discrimination" and "harassment" have taken on ever wider meanings, anti-discrimination offices have taken on a larger mandate, enforcing not just equal opportunity but progressive ideology.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
At least one complaint alleged that the email "was a form of discrimination," Eldik told the student, while the "harassment" claims centered on how "psychically harmful" it had been.
That's at the 7:15 mark. https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
This concept creep has been enforced by bureaucratic self-interest. Anti-discrimination officers have an incentive to address grievances in heavy-handed, public ways, a fact the audio drives home.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
When the student suggested letting his peers reach out to him individually to discuss their feelings about the email, Eldik responded: "I don’t want to make our office look like an ineffective source of resolution." See 13:35 of the audio: https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
Insanity.
That resolution may not involve any formal punishment. In a third meeting on Oct. 12, nearly a month after the initial incident, Eldik and Cosgrove assured the student they would not put anything in his file that might pose a problem for the bar.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
How generous of them!
"We would never get on our letterhead and write anything to the bar about you," Eldik said. "You may have been confused."
(Gee, I wonder why.)
At their first meeting, Eldik had hinted that the student's race might result in some leniency.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
"As a man of color, there probably isn’t as much scrutiny of you as there might be of a white person in the same position," Eldik informed the Native American student. "I just want to acknowledge that there’s a complexity to that too." See the 5:15 mark.https://t.co/JgTRr07XBv
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 13, 2021
You can listen to the audio here.