Kudos to Dean of Stanford Law School

My March 16, 2023 post “We must regain our ability to discuss, debate, and disagree” took aim at higher education’s all too frequent intolerance for viewpoint diversity with specific reference to recent events at Stanford University Law School.

In an important development, Jenny Martinez, Dean of Stanford Law sent this memorandum to all students and faculty. It’s long and properly legalistic in form given its audience, but here’s the key paragraph:

“At the same time, I want to set expectations clearly going forward: our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is not going to take the form of having the school administration announce institutional positions on a wide range of current social and political issues, make frequent institutional statements about current news events, or exclude or condemn speakers who hold views on social and political issues with whom some or even many in our community disagree. I believe that focus on these types of actions as the hallmark of an “inclusive” environment can lead to creating and enforcing an institutional orthodoxy that is not only at odds with our core commitment to academic freedom, but also that would create an echo chamber that ill prepares students to go out into and act as effective advocates in a society that disagrees about many important issues. Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them (or even hearing arguments about them), but however appealing that position might be in some other context, it is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school. Law students are entering a profession in which their job is to make arguments on behalf of clients whose very lives may depend on their professional skill. Just as doctors in training must learn to face suffering and death and respond in their professional role, lawyers in training must learn to confront injustice or views they don’t agree with and respond as attorneys.”

This is exactly the sort of commitment to freedom of speech and viewpoint diversity I would hope to see from every university, particularly law schools. I take substantive issue with only one of Dean Martinez’s statements:

“Needless to say, faculty and students are free to disagree with the material presented in these sessions or with the arguments I have presented in this memorandum – there will be no orthodoxy on this topic either.”

The first phrase is excellent but the exception after the dash is not. Institutional orthodoxy about free speech, as in the Chicago Principles I noted in my previous post, is not only justified, but necessary for universities to fulfill their vital role in our society.

Overall, kudos to Dean Martinez and Stanford Law for standing up to the mob and for freedom of speech.