Full Video Shows Law Students Heckling, Shouting Down Ilya Shapiro for 45 Minutes

G eorgetown Law’s cancellation campaign against Ilya Shapiro has gone national. The libertarian-conservative constitutional law scholar, who was placed on administrative leave at the end of January amid an activist-led backlash over his tweets, was shouted down by students at a University of California, Hastings College of Law event on Tuesday.

National Review has viewed the full 45-minute video of the encounter, revealing a chaotic scene in which students mocked and hurled profanity at Shapiro, who remained calm throughout. His speech, organized by the school chapter of the Federalist Society, had been scheduled months in advance. The event, titled “The Battle Over Justice Breyer’s Seat,” was set to feature a debate between Shapiro and progressive UC Hastings professor Rory Little. Shapiro remains on leave from Georgetown over his January tweet criticizing President Biden’s vow to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court; he had argued that Sri Srinivasan, an Indian-American judge, would have been the best pick but “we’ll get [a] lesser black woman” because Srinivasan doesn’t meet the racial criteria. Shapiro apologized for the phrasing.

But the incident led to a student uprising at Georgetown, a scene that repeated itself, only with more intensity, at UC Hastings. Shapiro was met at the venue by a crowd of activists affiliated with the school’s Black Law Students Association (BLSA). The event began quietly, with opening remarks by the president of the school’s Federalist Society. When Shapiro took the lectern, the activists — dressed in all black and carrying signs denouncing Shapiro and the school administration — erupted into loud chants of “black lawyers matter” and pounded the table to drown him out.

Shapiro’s repeated attempts to speak were silenced by yells from the assembled students, who unleashed a stream of profanity and insults as he stood silently at the front of the room. (“When did you start balding? Are you sad that you’re balding? I would be,” one said mockingly to laughter from the audience. “You’re a f***ing coward!” another yelled). Multiple student activists physically confronted Shapiro; one moved to block his access to the lectern and later began clapping in his face as students chanted, “Say it to her face, coward.” Activists began drawing “black lawyers matter” on the whiteboard behind him. At one point, they commandeered the box controlling the Zoom stream of the event and flooded the live comment section.

In the middle of the turmoil, Shapiro left the room to consult with organizers. While he was gone, academic dean and provost of students Morris Ratner attempted to calm the room. “Free speech . . . is a key right that we are required to uphold, so I applaud those of you who want to express your views,” he said. “There’s a way to do that that’s consistent with our institutional codes and norms.” That was met with laughter and boos from the audience. “It’s not a legitimate point of view!” one student yelled.

“I hear you, but we have a code of student conduct, that makes it a violation . . . to disrupt an event, so we’re gonna try this one more time,” Ratner responded. Activists were unsatisfied. “We can’t have a bigot on campus,” one said. Another approached the dean directly. “Remove him off the f***ing campus, because that’s what we want,” she said. The crowd cheered.

Shapiro remains sanguine about the confrontation. “It’s too bad that a heckler’s veto prevailed here, but I’d welcome the opportunity to return to Hastings — or anywhere else — to discuss the Supreme Court, constitutional law, and other areas where I may have expertise,” he told National Review.

This isn’t Shapiro’s first run-in with BLSA. At a meeting between the Georgetown Law BLSA and the Georgetown Law administration, activists demanded Shapiro’s ouster as well as “reparations” in the form of “free food” and “a place to cry” in early February. Like the Georgetown BLSA, the UC Hastings BLSA released a statement denouncing Shapiro’s “overt propagation of white supremacy and anti-Black racism” and demanding, among other things, “the creation of a committee of diverse student representatives to be made part of the on-campus speaker approval process.” The statement also demanded that the school require “faculty to undergo intensive CRT training and education before advising any student organization” and mandate “CRT as a graduation requirement for all students.” That received favorable comments on Instagram from at least one member of the Georgetown Law BLSA, who wrote: “Thank you for the support!” The national BLSA account also commented that it was “so proud of you all!!” on the video of the activists shouting down Shapiro.

Like at Georgetown Law, the UC Hastings BLSA also enjoyed the support of some members of the law school faculty. Professor Little, who sat quietly on one side of the room for the duration of the protests, appeared to endorse the effort to de-platform Shapiro while the latter was outside conferring with organizers. A livestream posted on the BLSA’s Instagram page showed Little turning to a student activist to say, “I’m all for the protest here.” The student responded by asking the professor to “look at the camera and state why, and tell them that you’re for us.” Little smiled and waved. “I’m all for it,” he repeated.

Another member of the UC Hastings faculty, Veena Dubal, boosted the BLSA’s statement and list of demands on Twitter, writing that she was “sharing” the statement “upon” the “request” of the activists. “For me, the central intellectual query here is not whether Shapiro can speak, but why he was invited,” she added. “Why is the voice of someone who has made overtly racist & misogynist statements being elevated? . . . I found [Georgetown Law Professor Paul Butler’s] OpEd in the Washington Post useful in drawing a sharp line between speech protected by the ideal of ‘academic freedom’ & speech that is racist & sexist.”

Little declined to comment for this piece. Dubal told National Review via email that her comments were “not public support of [the BLSA’s] actions” and that “the Federalist Society students were within their right to invite Shapiro; my wish is that the focus of the debate prior to his arrival was on why he was invited.” She declined to address the specific question of whether Shapiro should be fired from Georgetown Law. “I believe that the process that the administration engages in to make their determination should consider the impact of his statements on the students he is hired to teach,” she wrote.

To its credit, the UC Hastings administration sent a long email to the student body this morning, reiterating the school’s “commitment to protecting free speech and academic inquiry” and writing that “the act of silencing a speaker is fundamentally contrary to the values of this school as an institution of higher learning; it is contrary to the pedagogical mission of training students for a profession in which they will prevail through the power of analysis and argument.” The email continued:

We may not support Mr. Shapiro’s previously expressed views – some of which we personally find deeply offensive – but we support his right to speak on our campus. As Voltaire famously stated, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Disrupting an event to prevent a speaker from being heard is a violation of our policies and norms, including the Code of Student Conduct and Discipline, Section 107 (“Harmful Acts and Disturbances”), which the College will—indeed, must—enforce. At the same time, we will continue our efforts to ensure that we equip all community members with the knowledge and skills to engage respectfully, thoughtfully, and sensitively with each other and with a wide array of theories, identities, political viewpoints, and perspectives. This project will be informed by our continued elaboration of principles of community, inclusion, academic freedom, and free inquiry.

That’s a much stronger response than Georgetown Law’s. But the question remains: Given that the students who shouted down Shapiro violated the school’s code of conduct, as the administration’s email explicitly acknowledged — what will the consequences be?