From Stanford law school, a damning and frightening confession

In the aftermath of the disgraceful shout down of Judge Kyle Duncan, a Stanford law student has written an op-ed called (in the paper edition) “Confessions from Stanford Law’s silent majority.” A better title would have been “Confessions of an abject coward.” A good subtitle would be “Why we may be doomed.”

The op-ed begins with the law student, Tess Winston, staking out a middle ground. The law school’s student body consists of two loud camps, one aligned with “far-right politics” and one aligned with the “far left.” Most students, including Winston, are in neither camp, she says.

How many students fall into the loud camps? On the far right, only about six in a third-year class of around 180. On the far left, “perhaps 20.”

The other students, about 85 percent of the class, constitute what Winston calls “the silent majority.”

That label dates back at least as far as Richard Nixon, who appealed to “the great silent majority of my fellow Americans” for support of his Vietnam policy. The silent majority Nixon had in mind may not have talked about politics much, but neither did it cower. It reelected Nixon in a landslide.

But Winston’s silent majority at Stanford law is very different. She writes:

[The far left students] hold more social influence because, in my experience, the many law students with left-of-center politics, but not far left, fear being labeled moderate or conservative by them.

The far-left students have a dismissive shorthand for fellow students whose politics they consider not sufficiently progressive: “future prosecutors.” The message is loud and clear — prosecutors are the bad guys. But also: Be careful what you say.

Okay, that’s the message. But why does anyone feel intimidated by it? Why would anyone alter what he or she says due to fear of how a relatively small number of bullies will label them?

Winston continues:

In some] courses, students have refused to argue points made by justices whose perspectives they don’t like. Or they first issue a disclaimer about their disagreement. That sets the standard: Other students fall into line, making a similar disclaimer when it’s their turn to role-play.

I’m tempted to call these gutless students “snowflakes,” except that every snowflake is said to be different. These kids are afraid of being different. To call them “sheep” seems more apt.

Outside of class, it’s even worse:

Expressing nuance about certain matters — whether on Israel or policing — is essentially taboo for anyone who doesn’t want to invite social ostracizing.

But how can 20 students in a class of 180 ostracize anyone effectively? Either Winston has her numbers wrong or the cowardice of the “silent majority” is staggering.

Winston says she wishes she had more often expressed her views “rather than remaining silent.” However, she doesn’t explain why she was intimidated into silence by the intellectual thuggery of roughly one-ninth of her classmates.

I can’t resist comparing Winston’s Stanford law class to mine and Bill’s. We went to Stanford at the height of the anti-war movement, and the vast majority of our class was in the anti-war camp.

However, the representation of far leftists was probably about the same as what Winston says is the case today. The representation of conservatives was somewhat higher. I was the former group. Bill was in the latter.

The big difference in the two classes is that in ours, few on the far left tried to bully or ostracize anyone. Bill was my best friend at Stanford, as he is today.

Had I tried to bully or ostracize anyone, I would have failed. I would have been the one with few, if any, friends.

Today, by contrast, we seem to have fledgling elites who can’t stand up for themselves. Not just at Stanford law, but also at Harvard and Yale, according to Winston’s reports from her fellow high-achieving gutless friends.

In the 1990s, some conservatives liked to say that in coming generations, a high percentage of the top students would be conservative. The reasoning was that the best students tend to rebel against orthodoxy, as so many did in the 1960s.

This optimistic scenario was plausible. However, it didn’t take into account that coming generations of students might be much softer than their predecessors.

The softness of the last few generations of students has been evident. But I confess —until I read Tess Winston’s confession,” I didn’t realize how deep the rot is. Or quite how much trouble America may well be in.

I