Will Ilya Shapiro Be Allowed to Speak at Denver’s Law School?

Ilya Shapiro, the legal scholar, is speaking at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law today on “free speech in academia” — a topic that Shapiro, who was the subject of a militant cancellation campaign during his short tenure at Georgetown Law, is intimately familiar with. Ironically, however, the DU law school’s student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a hard-left activist group, has spent the last week “demanding” that the administration “cancel” Shapiro’s speech:

After some criticism on Twitter, the DU NLG appears to have made the open letter they were circulating private. That now-inaccessible letter, while mentioning in passing the original tweet that prompted Shapiro’s Georgetown cancellation, cited his “attacks on DEI initiatives in higher education” as its primary concern: If “the University and law school believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential components of a world-class education,” it writes, “then it is beyond debate that hosting a staunch opponent of DEI and racial justice initiatives is inconsistent with that mission.” Apparently, DEI — a doctrine that emerged five minutes ago — is now beyond debate; so much so, in fact, that its critics are no longer deserving of access to public forums.

The administration, to its credit, appears to have stood its ground — although we’ll soon hear more about whether or not there were any disruptions of Shapiro’s speech, which is set to take place at 1:45 E.T. On Twitter, the NLG chapter posted a screenshot of what appears to be a letter from the law-school administration, warning that “disruption of the event” would be “subject to proceedings” under the school’s honor code, “as well as potential referral to professional licensing authorities.” Good for DU. The left-wing activist group wasn’t happy:

Of course, there’s zero contradiction between standing for free speech and opposing efforts to shut down free speech via a “heckler’s veto.” In fact, the former necessitates the latter. But intellectual consistency isn’t really the point here. That’s apparent throughout the NLG letter — which states, without a hint of irony (or self-awareness): “We recognize that prohibiting Shapiro from speaking in our law school in some ways plays into his hand. In fact, his proposed speech is about the alleged silencing of conservative academics.” The alleged silencing. Huh, I wonder how conservatives got that crazy idea into their heads.