Senator Ted Cruz accused Stanford Law School of training “left-wing radicals” and “antifa” after a crowd of students shouted at a conservative federal judge.
The Texas Republican noted that Tyrien Steinbach, Stanford’s associate dean for diversity, lectured U.S. District Court Judge Kyle Duncan during Thursday’s event, telling him that a raucous crowd of jeering law students would “go out into the world and be an advocate.”
“Notice she didn’t say ‘lawyers,'” Mr. Cruz said Monday on his “The Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast.
“This is Stanford Law School. They are trying to train social justice warriors. They are trying to teach leftist radicals to “occupy Wall Street”, “burn it all down”. They are trying to prepare antifa,” he said. “They are not trying to train lawyers. Lawyers speak before judges.”
Mr. Cruz, a graduate of Harvard Law School, added that ”I’ve never seen a federal judge on the left or the right behave like this.”
Stanford University officials apologized to Judge Duncan on Saturday after he was invited to campus to address the Stanford Federalist Society, only to be swarmed by left-wing student hecklers who kept interrupting him.
The judge asked the administrator to intervene, pushing Ms. Steinbach to the stand and accusing him of disruption, telling him that “your work has caused harm,” while insisting that she supports free speech.
Stanford Law School Dean Jennifer Martinez sent an email to alumni on Monday assuring them that she and Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavin are “looking into what happened and will work to ensure that protocols are in place so that disruptions of this nature didn’t happen anymore.”
“The way things unfolded with Judge Duncan was inconsistent with our institutional commitment to free speech,” Ms. Martinez told the graduates. “Employees who were supposed to enforce university policy failed to do so and instead intervened in inappropriate ways inconsistent with the university’s commitment to free speech.”
Calls for Ms Steinbach to be fired have been heard on social media since the profanity-laced video went viral. The judge was eventually escorted from the room by federal marshals.
Stanford Federal Student Prez appears on Tucker. Does not paint a happy picture. pic.twitter.com/VgYtLUTxDZ
— Andy Grewal (@AndyGrewal) March 14, 2023
Judge Duncan, a Trump appointee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, described the fight as a “staged public shaming.”
“For a good 20-30 minutes (I estimate) the crowd booed me mercilessly and screamed after every third word,” Judge Duncan told author and journalist Rod Dreher in an interview on Substack on Sunday.
“And then Steinbach launched into her elaborate prepared speech, in which she both ‘welcomed’ me to campus and told me how horrible and offensive I am to society,” the judge said. “Then she said I should be free to make my remarks. Try giving a lecture in such conditions. Basically, they wanted me to make a hostage video. No thanks.”
Tim Rosenberger, president of the Stanford Federalist Society, said Monday that “this is something that happens every day, not just at Stanford, but at many of our universities.”
“I think a lot of us who worked really hard to get to Stanford feel like crap right now,” Mr. Rosenberger said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. “You get here, you feel it, you kind of see that there’s a crowd and there’s a way you have to think.”
Afterward, he said, only one law professor other than the club’s adviser reached out to him to express support: Joseph Bankman, the father of disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
“One professor, Joe Bankman, emailed me and I think he’s fine with letting it be known,” Mr. Rosenberger said. “And our advisor obviously supported me. In law school, no one else. There were a few people from other parts of campus, but there wasn’t a lot of support, and it seems like it was basically a good thing.”
Mr. Cruz said left-leaning students put up fliers in the run-up to the speech with the names and photos of Stanford Federalist Society board members saying they should be “ashamed,” with the word “in bright red, Halloween-like, dripping letters.” »
“It’s deliberately targeting those students,” Mr. Cruz said. “If it happened the other way around, if a conservative put out a list with the photos and names of nine liberal students and said, ‘You should be ashamed,’ I guarantee you that the law school would take disciplinary action, if not expel any student who did this. .”
He added that “to see it happen to a judge is amazing.”
