Georgetown Law’s Hypocrisies Pile Up

I n late January, Ilya Shapiro was suspended from his new faculty position at Georgetown Law for a tweet that criticized the Biden administration’s use of racial preferences in Supreme Court nominations. Shapiro’s indefinite suspension, which came on the heels of a pressure campaign from student activists and left-wing Twitter pundits, was announced “pending an investigation into whether he violated our policies and expectations on professional conduct, non-discrimination, and anti-harassment, the results of which will inform our next steps,” according to an email from the law school’s dean.

Wednesday will mark the 100th day of that “investigation.” Given that the tweet in question was just 45 words — some of which were single-letter abbreviations such as “v,” “&,” etc. — that will add up to an average of 2.2 days per word. The Georgetown Law administration is very meticulous.

But the same administrators seem significantly less scrupulous when it comes to investigating controversial remarks from the progressive end of the political spectrum. Just a couple of weeks ago, a Palestinian activist with a long history of antisemitic comments — including celebrating the Second Intifada, repeatedly calling for violence against Israeli Jews, fantasizing about Israeli settlers dying “in the most torturous & slow ways,” and writing in his book that Israelis “harvest the organs of the martyred” to “feed their warriors our own” — was invited to speak on campus. But when a group of Jewish students raised concerns, Mitch Bailin, the law school’s dean of students, defended the event on free-speech grounds: “We allow a huge amount of latitude even where speech is deeply offensive to some members of the community, some or even many,” he told the students in a meeting. When pushed for specific examples, Bailin cited the fact that “the university has had speakers who have definitely said they find gay marriage, gay practice, gay individuals, completely immoral. We have had speakers who have said the same thing about trans people.”

Georgetown Law’s free-speech protections, then, extend to calls for the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews, but not to defenses of the principle of colorblind equality under the law.

So don’t hold your breath for an analogous “investigation” into yesterday’s tweets from Georgetown Law’s Josh Chafetz. On Sunday afternoon, Chafetz — who has since made his Twitter account private in the face of a firestorm of criticism from other users — wrote: “The ‘protest at the Supreme Court, not at the justices’ houses’ line would be more persuasive if the Court hadn’t this week erected fencing to prevent protesters from coming anywhere near it.” In response to the ensuing controversy, Chafetz tweeted that he was “not opposed” to activist “attempt[s] to pressure judges” to rule in favor of upholding Roe v. Wade. “And before the ‘oh so you support [January 6] lmao!’ trolls show up: the difference is *substantive*,” he maintained in a separate tweet. “When the mob is right, some (but not all!) more aggressive tactics are justified. When not, not.”

Ah. Free speech for me, but not for thee; mob rule for me, but not for thee. Kudos to Professor Chafetz, at least, for his honesty.

Activists have, in fact, been holding protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices in a blatant attempt to pressure the Court to uphold Roe. Chafetz’s framing of the issue — that the moral validity of those protests is somehow dependent on exactly how close protesters are allowed to get to the Supreme Court — is odd, given that the fencing around the Court is just far enough away to prevent the unruly protests from spilling onto the steps of the Court itself.

Of course, Chafetz — in textbook lawyerly fashion — maintained that his tweets were not an outright endorsement of a mob assault on the Supreme Court, despite his subsequent argument that “aggressive tactics are justified” when “the mob is right.” But when repeatedly prompted to specify exactly how close the protesters would need to get for him to find the argument against protests at the justices’ homes “persuasive,” Chafetz neglected to answer.

Chafetz can rest assured that he will not meet the same fate as Shapiro, however. He said as much toward the end of last night’s controversy: “Folks can snitch tag @GeorgetownLaw all they want (I’m so sorry, public affairs folks!), they’re not going to fire me over a tweet you don’t like.” Of course, Shapiro’s indefinite suspension was initiated by a prominent progressive writer “snitch tagging” Georgetown Law. But in all likelihood, the administration won’t be placing Chafetz on administrative leave “pending an investigation” into his tweets. Unlike Georgetown Law’s Black Law Student Association, the school’s Federalist Society is unlikely to hold a sit-in demanding “reparations” in the form of a designated place to cry about the emotional trauma inflicted by Chafetz’s words. That’s because the Georgetown Law Federalist Society, in contrast to the activists gunning for Shapiro’s termination, is ostensibly run by students with at least a modicum of emotional maturity.

To no one’s surprise, Chafetz had previously endorsed the mob pile-on against Shapiro: When Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, criticized Georgetown Law’s hiring of Shapiro — “When people tell you who they are, over and over and over and over and over again, maybe we should believe them,” Vladeck wrote, followed by a “snitch tag”: “Great hire, @GeorgetownLaw!” — Chafetz wrote in a since-deleted tweet that “Steve’s absolutely right.” But unlike his colleagues’, Shapiro’s commitment to academic freedom has been consistent. “Josh Chafetz should not be ‘investigated’ or otherwise disciplined for his tweets — and neither should I for mine,” he told National Review. “This episode yet again exemplifies the ideological double standard in academia and on Twitter.”

Chafetz and Georgetown Law had not responded to requests for comment at the time this article was published.