Judge James Ho

Two federal judges have now expanded their hiring boycott to include Stanford Law School along with Yale Law School because the administrators at both schools have refused to punish violent student protesters who acted to silence others.

The judges, James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Elizabeth Branch, a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, will hire no graduates from these schools, thus reducing the whole reason for going there. Law students graduate hoping this diploma will get them jobs working for important judges, an early step to becoming a judge themselves.

The question that Ho and Branch raise, however, is whether any judge would want to hire any students from these particular schools. As Judge Ho noted in a speech on April 1st at the annual meeting of the Texas Review of Law & Politics.

The real problem in the academy is not disruption—but discrimination. Rampant, blatant discrimination against disfavored viewpoints. Against students, faculty, and anyone else who dares to voice a view that may be mainstream across America—but contrary to the views of cultural elites.

Moreover, let’s just say it: The viewpoint discrimination we most often see in the academy today is discrimination against religious conservatives. Just look at which viewpoints are targeted most frequently at speaker events—and excluded most vigorously from faculty appointments.

Unless we take action to solve the real problem—discrimination, not disruption—all we’re doing is giving speeches.

Anyone can talk a big game about freedom of speech. We all know how to give flowery speeches about intellectual freedom. The recent letter from the Stanford Dean contains some good words, too. But that letter promises no meaningful, lasting institutional change to eradicate discrimination.

So we have to start facing the facts. We have to stop burying our heads in the sand. And we have to ask ourselves: If a law school openly tolerates and even practices religious discrimination, who would want to go to that law school? And why would we want to hire them?

In other words, Ho and Branch not only consider the students from these schools unqualified to work for them, they consider the schools themselves as incompetent failures. Despite their elite reputation, Stanford and Yale produce garbage law educations. Students going there apparently don’t learn the law and how it demands an open-mind and thoughtful deliberation. Instead, they are taught they don’t need to think because they have the right to shout down anyone they disagree with.

Such teaching is a disgrace, violating every basic tenet of western legal tradition. No wonder Ho and Branch have been so public about their boycott.

Moreover, they might be leading this boycott, but they have been joined by about a dozen other judges of all ranks. And though Yale and Stanford are presently feeling the brunt of this boycott, its impact is certainly sending tremors through every other law school nationwide. It is now clear that holding a diploma from any law school that tolerates violent protests and censorship by a mob will make that diploma worthless when it comes time to get a real law clerk job after graduation.

This boycott of specific law schools however is only a start. It needs to expand to other professions outside the law. Anyone looking to hire college graduates expects to hire someone who can think and keep an open-mind. Unfortunately, the vast majority of modern colleges are like Yale and Stanford, and teach just the opposite. Every university that has participated in this blacklist culture needs to be put on notice. There can no longer be a free ride for such incompetence.