Legal scholar Ilya Shapiro will be taken off administrative leave from Georgetown University, after the institution concluded its investigation into a series of tweets by Shapiro that caused backlash on campus.
Shapiro welcomed the decision in a statement on Thursday.
“I’m gratified that I’ll get to do the job for which I was hired more than four months ago,” Shapiro said. “All students in my programs can expect to be accorded the freedom to think and speak freely and to be treated equally: a diversity of ideas will be most welcome.”
My statement on the ending of my administrative leave and resuming my duties @GeorgetownLaw @GUConstitution: pic.twitter.com/4eHNxQhPQi
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) June 2, 2022
Shapiro wrote several tweets in January on the Biden administration’s selection process for a new Supreme Court justice, with the president pledging to nominate a black woman to the Court. In one of those tweets, Shapiro wrote that “objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan” but that “alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectional hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.”
Shapiro later apologized for the wording of the tweet, saying he regretted “my poor choice of words, which undermine my message that no one should be discriminated against for his or her gender or skin color,” in comments to Reason.
William Treanor, dean of Georgetown Law, subsequently announced that Shapiro was placed on leave “pending an investigation into whether he violated our policies and expectations on professional conduct, non-discrimination, and anti-harassment.” Investigations were conducted by Georgetown’s Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action, as well as its Office of Human Resources.
Treanor announced on Thursday that the investigations had concluded, finding that because Shapiro tweeted on January 26, and because his employment at Georgetown was set to begin on February 1, Shapiro could not be fired from the university for what he said before his employment began.
The investigation “concluded that Mr. Shapiro was not a Georgetown employee at the time of his tweets. As such, he was not properly subject to discipline for them,” Treanor said in a statement. The investigation also found that Shapiro’s “tweets had a significant negative impact on the Georgetown Law community, including current and prospective students, alumni, staff, and faculty.”