Not Fifth Circuit judge Kyle Duncan this time, but Nebraska law school professor Rick Duncan (no relation).
Believe it or not, BYU law school administrators—yes, Brigham Young University—canceled a Federalist Society event last fall in which Rick Duncan was to discuss the Supreme Court’s abortion decision in Dobbs with his friend BYU law professor Fred Gedicks. Duncan was expected to offer an approving view of Dobbs, while the liberal Gedicks was expected to be more critical.
As I’ve just learned from this article, and have independently confirmed, BYU’s administrators objected to Duncan’s participation in the event because of a talk he gave in 2021 on the topic “True Diversity Means Inclusion, Not Exclusion.” In that talk, Duncan had cited transgender pronoun ideology—the insistence that everyone state one’s “preferred pronouns”—as an example of coerced speech. Some BYU law students claimed to have been “offended” by his remarks and on that basis objected to his appearing on campus for the Dobbs event. And the administrators chose to surrender to the objecting students.
When such apparent cowardice exists even at a private religious law school sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is it any wonder that law-school deans elsewhere kowtow to the grievance-mongers?
It’s obviously a coincidence that two Duncans have been victims of woke cancel culture. But it’s not a coincidence that transgender ideology has driven those cancelations. I’m reminded of Lady Macbeth’s words as she contemplated the vastly more brutal cancelation of another Duncan:
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!
Addenda: 1. One source at BYU law school tells me that Duncan’s 2021 event on diversity generated complaints that Duncan had been “disrespectful” to a university DEI administrator who took part in the event. This same source says that law-school administrators told Federalist Society leaders that they were welcome to seek approval for Duncan to speak on Dobbs at a later date, which would allow administrators to prepare adequately for the event.
2. Rick Duncan responds: “I definitely was not disrespectful of anyone. Our ideas were in conflict, but our conversation was civil and respectful on both sides. We even had a friendly hug at the end.”