Yale Law School has dominated much of the news over the past month, but unfortunately for the once-vaunted institution, this seems to be one rare exception to the time-tested adage “there’s no such thing as bad press.”
On March 10, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Kristen Waggoner and American Humanist Association attorney Monica Miller went to Yale Law School to discuss Ms. Waggoner’s recent U.S. Supreme Court victory on campus free speech. They were greeted by a mob of nearly 120 law students who showed up to hurl insults and disrupt a legal panel discussion about remedies for First Amendment violations on college campuses.
Ultimately, Ms. Waggoner and her fellow female panelist had to be escorted away from the event by Yale police. It wasn’t safe for them to leave on their own.
The incident has evoked public criticism from across the ideological and political spectrum. Those considered left of center, like esteemed law professor Erwin Chemerinsky (Berkley Law) and Chancellor Howard Gillman (UC Irvine), along with those considered right of center, like the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, have spoken out to denounce this unsettling instance of cancel culture.
And now, you can add to the list of critics a group of over 1,400 Americans, including many Philadelphia Statement signatories, who signed a letter to Dean Heather Gerken of Yale Law School on April 7, urging her administration to take tangible steps to address the rapidly deteriorating culture of free speech and civility on campus. This letter represents one more example of those across the political divide finding common ground to support free speech.
Notable signatories on the letter include five current governors, 24 state attorneys general, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and several members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Other public figures include Ben Carson, Jordan B. Peterson, Dr. Robert George, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dr. Kevin Roberts (President, Heritage Foundation), Elise Westhoff (President, Philanthropy Roundtable), Governor Scott Walker (President, Young America’s Foundation), Dr. Peter W. Wood (President, National Association of Scholars), and Eli Lehrer (President, R Street Institute).
“Dean Gerken, we urge you to take concrete action to correct the course of Yale Law School,” the letter states. “Our nation desperately needs the next generation of attorneys, legislators, judges, and Supreme Court justices to be marked by the character and values that undergird the American legal profession and a free society. These include, at the very least, respect for the right to freedom of speech, a commitment to living peacefully with one another despite differences, and esteem for truly open dialogue and debate.”
The signatories also note that students targeted Ms. Waggoner based on the discredited word of the morally bankrupt Southern Poverty Law Center—whose rhetoric has previously inspired unruly and violent behavior on and off campuses throughout the U.S.
The letter ends by calling upon Dean Gerken to take steps to cultivate a free speech culture at Yale Law School, take appropriate disciplinary action consistent with Yale’s free speech policies against the students involved in the inappropriate and dangerous incident, and correct or retract Yale Law School’s previous statements that downplayed the students’ unruly and threatening behavior.
You can read and sign the letter here.
Click here to download the Statement
On Monday morning, Alliance Defending Freedom published a Freedom Matters episode that sets forth the Philadelphia Statement as a tangible solution the pressing need to recommit to free speech and civil discourse. The video asks critical question: Will our generation be the one that saved free speech, or the one that gave it up? This is the question facing the United States as social media gatekeepers, campus speech codes, and “cancel culture” threaten to silence free speech in the name of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion. What can we do to save this fundamental right in our free society? Stand up, speak out, and sign on to the Philadelphia Statement, at www.ThePhillyStatement.org.
You can watch this video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/kfNTNenJXnc), ADF’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AllianceDefendingFreedom/), and our new account at Rumble.com (https://rumble.com/user/AllianceDefendingFreedom). You can help more people see this video by sharing, subscribing, “liking” or leaving a comment.
“This summer—just as saying something controversial (or not saying something mandatory) got numerous charitable leaders excoriated, several academic leaders dumped, a host of editors and writers ousted, and articles and books cancelled by angry mobs—something interesting happened,” Philanthropy Roundtable wrote in its quarterly magazine. “Symmetrical open letters were published by separate groups of center-left thinkers and center-right thinkers, both of them warning that free speech, personal expression, and democratic functioning are being seriously threatened right now.”
Click here to read the article in full.
“In today's polarized political climate, many people are afraid to voice their beliefs,” Love and Fidelity Network executive director Alain Oliver writes. “Across ideologies, philosophies, and religious backgrounds, many have found themselves demonized and silenced. We at the Love and Fidelity Network, and our students, are too frequently subjected to retaliation for emphasizing the importance of discussing family, marriage, and sexual integrity, which is why we signed the Philadelphia Statement on Civil Discourse and the Strengthening of Liberal Democracy.”
Read the article in full here.
With over 15,000 signatures since its August 11 launch, the Philadelphia Statement continues to draw support from across a wide spectrum of ideological beliefs and spheres of influence.
As the Christian Post reported Friday morning, new signers include Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon and theologian Wayne Grudem, who highlight a newly released list of public signatories to the Statement.
Read the article here.
At its website Thursday, Americans for Prosperity CEO Emily Seidel voiced her support for the Philadelphia Statement and the thousands of everyday Americans who have signed onto the Statement since its launch on August 11.
Read the article here.
Writing at the Toronto Sun on Monday, George Mason University Professor of Economics Walter E. Williams clapped back at censorship and microaggressions on college campuses, pointing to the Philadelphia Statement as an encouraging sign of a much-needed recommitment to free speech.
Read the article here.
Praising it as a “much-needed statement in response to the prevalent cancel culture that is threatening the bedrock of American right of free speech,” senior editor and director of the cultural program at the Independent Women’s Forum Charlotte Hays encouraged readers to read and sign the Philadelphia Statement.
Read the article here.
Writing at the Washington Examiner, Hoover Institution research fellow and founder of the AHA Foundation Ayaan Hirsi Ali pointed out the Philadelphia Statement’s importance in fighting back against cancel culture and what she called “the ideological straightjacket of critical race theory”. Rather than bullying others into silence, Hirsi Ali wrote, now is the time to rally and “stand up against this new closing of American minds.”
Click here to read the piece.
