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Georgetown lecturer reinstated after critical KJB tweet resigns, blasts school ‘diversicrats’ in letter

June 6, 2022 | | Print Article

Constitutional law scholar Ilya Shapiro is stepping down from his job at Georgetown University just a few days after he was reinstated by Dean William Treanor because the future suggests a slow-motion firing by anti-free speech academia that “stifles” intellectual diversity.

Georgetown placed Shapiro on administrative leave after he sent out what he subsequently described as an “inartful” tweet, for which he apologized, that seemed to criticize then-Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as a “lesser black woman” as compared to another potential nominee. Shapiro, who deleted the tweet, also acknowledged that it contained a poor choice of words.

The social media message enraged the woke cohort, and Shapiro’s appointment at the Georgetown University Law Center was shelved pending an investigation by the school’s diversity office and HR department, which took four months.

Treanor subsequently exonerated Shapiro because the January 26 tweet pre-dated the February 1 start date of his university appointment as executive director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.

At first, Shapiro seemed enthusiastic about the decision, but he has had second thoughts, he explained to The Wall Street Journal, after discussing the situation with his lawyer, his family, and advisers that he trusts.

“Dean William Treanor cleared me on the technicality that I wasn’t an employee when I tweeted, but the IDEAA implicitly repealed Georgetown’s Speech and Expression Policy and set me up for discipline the next time I transgress progressive orthodoxy. Instead of participating in that slow-motion firing, I’m resigning,” he declared.

Diversity gatekeepers “enforce an orthodoxy that stifles intellectual diversity, undermines equal opportunity, and excludes dissenting voices. Even the dean of an elite law school bucks these bureaucrats at his peril,” he also wrote, while castigating “cowardly administrators.”

In sharing that article on Twitter, Shapiro similarly explained that “Although I scored a technical victory last week and was reinstated, Georgetown Law and its diversicrats created a hostile work environment that made my remaining on the job untenable.”

In a blistering resignation letter to Treanor, Shapiro called out the dean for what he implied was bad-faith reasoning in echoing the diversity office’s claim that his tweet was, among other things, racially offensive:

“You reiterated these concerns in your June 2 statement to the Georgetown Law community, further noting the ‘harmful’ of my tweets and the ‘pain’ they have caused. Contrary to your June 2 statement, no reasonable person acting in good faith could construe what I tweeted to be ‘objectively offensive’…Although my tweet was inartful, as I’ve readily admitted many times, its meaning that I considered one possible candidate to be best and thus all others to be less qualified is clear. Only those acting in bad faith to get me fired because of my political beliefs would misconstrue what I said to suggest otherwise…”

Among other things, Shapiro went to list examples of inflammatory tweets from left-wing Georgetown law professors that resulted in disciplinary action.

“I cannot again subject my family to public attacks on my character and livelihood that you and [the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action] have now made foreseeable, indeed inevitable. As a result of the hostile work environment that you and they have created, I have no choice but to resign,” his letter concluded.

Law schools, the training ground for future attorneys, are increasing trending woke just like much of academia. Against that backdrop, America has already seen how the law is being weaponized against conservatives and others who are politically opposed to the left.

Shapiro is hardly the first pro-free-speech educator who has fled academia, which one disillusioned professor has described as a one-sided social justice factory.

It is certainly understandable, moreover, that Shapiro would lose his enthusiasm for a teaching environment where, as he wrote, a “Sword of Damocles” hangs over his head because a comment that anyone found “offensive” would prompt disciplinary action according to the IDEAA report.

His resignation, in the short term anyway, appears to be a victory for the anti-free-speech cancel culture mob. Increasingly, diversity means conformity or exclusion.

The hostile work environment language in his missive — and this is entirely speculation —  perhaps suggests that he might be considering legal action.

In general, there is a concept in the law called constructive discharge, where an employer subjects a potential plaintiff to intolerable working conditions such that he or she has no alternative but to resign.

Reactions to the Shapiro resignation are still rolling in. Here is a sample from free-speech advocates:

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Robert Jonathan
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