It will be my pleasure to be the guest on Canto Talk this Thursday, July 16. Please join Silvio Canto, Jr., and me at 10 am Pacific/12 noon Central/ 1 pm Eastern by clicking HERE…or after for an archived podcast.
We will be catching-up with the whirling news cycle, in preparation for what will be a cyclonic election year. To begin with, will will review Legal Insurrection’s battle against the “Cancel Culture”, as experienced by Professor William Jacobson:
In October 2008, I founded the Legal Insurrection, a conservative law and politics website. My non-left-wing politics, though separate from my teaching, sometimes led to attacks on my job. There were threats, harassment and demands I be fired for the first several years of the website, but those always came from off campus — until now.
That all changed when I wrote two blog posts the first week of June 2020, criticizing BLM as riots and looting spread around the country after the death of George Floyd. Now, I am facing cancel culture from within the law school.
In one blog post, I documented how the “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” founding narrative of BLM was fabricated after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. Even the Obama Justice Department found that Brown was shot after attacking a police officer, and did not have his hands raised in surrender or say, “Don’t shoot.” Yet to this day, I pointed out, BLM protesters chant, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
I wrote a second blog post harshly criticizing the riots and looting. I argued that such violence reflected a movement “led by anti-American, anti-capitalist activists … [who] have concocted a false narrative of mass murder of Blacks at the hands of police, when the statistics show otherwise.” I called on the federal government to track down “people who helped coordinate the violence.”
Whether people at Cornell agreed with my off-campus politics is beside the point. The purpose of education, particularly law school education, is to be able to debate the merits of arguments and through that debate come to a better understanding. But that is not what happened.
The response was a paradigm of cancel culture. There was a coordinated email and petition campaign by alumni to get me fired.
A group of 21 of my colleagues in the clinical program then denounced me in a letter to the Cornell Daily Sun student newspaper. While my name was not used in the letter, it was shared with students in advance of publication as a denunciation of me. The letter falsely accused me of supporting “institutionalized racism and violence” and threatened to “continue to expose and respond to racism masquerading as informed commentary.”
Not one of the 21 signatories, some of whom had been my colleagues for more than a decade and I considered friends, approached me with any concerns before running to the school newspaper and sharing their letter with students. It was reminiscent of so many revolutionary movements, where friends and neighbors rush to denounce each other.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, hardly a political conservative, criticized my colleagues, writing that their letter was “a chilling reminder of the rapid loss of free speech values on campuses,” not allowing that “critics of these protests could have anything other than racist motivations.” Professor Turley noted the intimidation factor, since “[t]o be labelled as a racist is devastating to an academic career and these professors know that … It is not just the death of free speech but our intellectual mission on university and college campuses.”
The dean of CLS also denounced me in an institutional statement that promised no adverse employment action because of my academic freedom and job security, but gratuitously found that my writings “do not reflect the values of Cornell Law School” as the dean has “articulated them.” The administration never gave me an opportunity to be heard on that damaging accusation, much less a process to challenge it. That statement serves as a warning to unprotected faculty, staff and students who may disagree with BLM to keep their views to themselves.
Additionally, we have have updates on the coronavirus:
A peak of the Centers for Disease Control weekly COVID-19 death totals reveals a substantially less grim picture. Here are the weekly totals of COVID-deaths nationwide, which show a significant drop from the mid-April highs of 17,000/week.
And, if you want to compare annual death totals, here are some real killers to address in California:
Looking at the totals, there have been 7,000 pneumonia-like COVID deaths so far, with the rate of death plummeting. And, in 2017, there were about 6300 pneumonia deaths for that year. While needless death is tragic, shutting down the state’s economy for COVID based on the numbers that are occurring seems ill-considered at this time. Furthermore, continued closures will likely lead to far more physical illness and mental health issues due to the consequences of unemployment.
But, no matter. Few people can do viral virtual signaling better than Newsom.
And, if there is time, we will provide an update on the US Navy ship that is burning in San Diego harbor!
So please tune in for a HOT show!
Temple of Mut 