The longer version is at the WaPo, but it is essentially about how the students at Stanford Law School were rude to an arguably transphobic, gun nut Fifth Circuit Judge who was a guest speaker as invited by [checks notes] the student chapter of the Federalist Society. The speech? “Covid, Guns, and Twitter.”

Now I know what you are thinking, “George Will is still alive?”

Oops, er,  I mean, this is sort of a so-what for us filthy dirty hippies, but the George Wills of the world are shocked at the lack of decorum and think that this is infringing on conservatives First Amendment rights.

The thing to remember about Free Speech is that it cuts both ways. Will wants the students to shut up and listen to the mean man. We’ve seen this before, Conservatives are not so much in favor of Free Speech as they are in favor of Forced Listening.

Some points:

• Stanford lends its credibility to the people it invites to speak on campus, and you know damn well that any number of guest speakers have added their presentations at the school to their resumé and upped their speaking fee. That said, Stanford should have some standards about who they imprint with their credibility.
• Not all ideas and points of view are worthy of respectful treatment. If this judge was an avowed racist, would George Will have his Brooks Brothers boxers in a knot? What if the speaker was an avowed communist?
• I know that sometimes grad students are required —as part of the degree program— to attend presentations by guest speakers. Imagine being told to get your very expensive graduate degree you have to attend a lecture by someone you find repellant?

This entire story reminds me of the apocryphal story of the table of nine Nazis. If you sit with them, is it a table with ten Nazis? I think that is very close to what the Stanford Law School students were faced with: will their silence give consent? Will their silence compromise their own beliefs?

The passive-aggressive solution would be to boycott the presentation, but since when are lawyers passive-aggressive?