More than 100 woke Yale Law School students disrupted a bipartisan panel on civil liberties by trying to shout down and intimidate the speakers — who had to be escorted out of the building by police, according to reports.
The panel hosted by the Federalist Society featured Kristen Waggone, a controversial anti-LGBTQ speaker with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, and Monica Miller, an associate at the progressive American Humanist Association, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The discussion on March 10 was held in hopes of showing how a liberal atheist and a conservative Christian could agree on free-speech issues, a member of the Federalist Society told the news outlet.
The two speakers reportedly discussed the recent US Supreme Court case Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, which dealt with freedom of religion and free speech on college campuses.
“It was pretty much the most innocuous thing you could talk about,” the member of the organization of conservatives and libertarians told the Free Beacon.
But about 120 students showed up to protest the event, where they outnumbered the audience members, and held up signs attacking the Alliance Defending Freedom, which won several Supreme Court cases establishing religious exemptions from civil rights laws.
Law school professor Kate Stith, the moderator, was forced to pause the event when one student told a member of the conservative group that she would “literally fight you, b—h,” according to audio and video obtained by the outlet.
Stith reportedly admonished the aspiring legal eagles about Yale’s free speech policies, which forbid any protest that “interferes with speakers’ ability to be heard and of community members to listen.”
The protesters — some of whom raised their middle fingers — continued their verbal assault, prompting the professor to tell them to “grow up,” footage shows.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, or help you leave,” Stith told the increasingly vocal students, who headed for the exit as one of them reportedly shouted “F— you, FedSoc!”
The pandemonium continued outside the event, as the students tried to drown out the speakers by yelling “Shame! Shame!” and “Protect trans kids!”
Law school associate dean Ellen Cosgrove, who was present at the event, did not confront any of the protesters, though their actions violated the school’s free speech policies, according to the outlet.
Two members of the Federalist Society also reportedly said they were grabbed by the crowd as they tried to leave.
Police officers arrived to escort Waggoner and Miller out of the building at the end of the event, the Free Beacon said.
Three members of the Federalist Society told the outlet that they were told that law school dean Heather Gerken called the cops. The school declined to comment on who asked for extra security.
The president of the Federalist Society said the group did not call the police.
“It was disturbing to witness law students whipped into a mindless frenzy,” Waggoner told the Free Beacon. “I did not feel it was safe to get out of the room without security.”
In an email to the Yale Daily News, she said: “Future lawyers should have the critical thinking skills, intellectual curiosity, humility, and maturity to engage with ideas and legal principles that they may disagree with.
“Unfortunately, some students who attended the Federalist Society event refused to allow others to speak and acted in an aggressive and hostile manner towards me, Professor Kate Stith, and Monica Miller from the American Humanist Association,” Waggoner added.
Meanwhile, more than 400 law students — more than 60 percent of the school’s student body — later signed an open letter assailing the presence of armed police at the meeting and voiced support for “peaceful student protesters.”
“The danger of police violence in this country is intensified against Black LGBTQ people, and particularly Black trans people,” the letter said, according to the report.
“Police-related trauma includes, but is certainly not limited to, physical harm. Even with all of the privilege afforded to us at YLS, the decision to allow police officers in as a response to the protest put YLS’s queer student body at risk of harm,” added the letter, which also condemned Stith for telling the students to “grow up,” and the Federalist Society for hosting the event.
Stith and Miller also received open letters slamming their participation in the event, according to the Free Beacon.
The letter to Stith accused her of giving “a platform to ideas that deny our full personhood,” the outlet said.
The one to Miller, who received an email before the event, reportedly said: “We are at a loss to understand why the [American Humanist Association] … has decided to legitimize an organization that is so actively hostile to queer flourishing.
“We urge you to withdraw from this event, which is little more than a thinly-disguised slap in the face to Yale Law’s queer students and their allies,” it added.
Miller, who described the ADF as a “hate group” during the event, told the outlet she was surprised by the missive, especially because the Supreme Court case she discussed had been hailed as a victory for civil rights groups.
Stith declined to comment to the outlet.
Per: NYP
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