In Wednesday’s WSJ Letters Tirien Steinbach, Stanford Law School’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, sought to defend her own behavior in the disruption that prevented an invited guest from speaking at all.
She insisted on asking a key question:
We have to…ask ourselves: Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Steinbach blew up her own case with that question, which she also put to the invited guest speaker as she participated in her school’s censorship and cancelation of his speaking.
Free speech juice always and everywhere is worth the squeeze. We have sufficient laws, already, to deal with actual incitement to riot, actual creation of panic in stressful situations, slander, and so on.
The correct and only legitimate answer to speech to which someone or some group objects is speech by that someone or group, or a perhaps more articulate supporter, to contradict or refute the prior.
That Steinbach is oblivious to this demonstrates her unfitness for her role on Stanford’s management team, even her unfitness to retain such licenses to practice law as she might have.