The Daily Signal - Law Professor Speaks Out After Being Shamed for Writing Honest History of BLM

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

Six months ago, William Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School and founder and publisher of Legal Insurrection, wrote two blog posts detailing the honest, but negative, history of Black Lives Mat...ter. Students and faculty immediately called upon the school to take action against Jacobson for writing the posts.  Jacobson joined the show on July 1 to explain why students and faculty were actively speaking out against him. He returns to the show today to share what transpired after more than a dozen student groups tried to mobilize a campus-wide boycott of his class and faculty quickly denounced him for his posts. We also cover these stories: Attorney General William Barr says he believes Russia is behind last week’s hack into several federal agencies.  A massive spending bill, likely to be signed into law by President Trump soon, is poised to result in most Americans getting $600 from the federal government.  Trump’s campaign files a new petition with the Supreme Court asking that the court reverse several cases having to do with Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots.   Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at gotransit.com slash tickets. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, December 22nd. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Virginia Allen. Six months ago, William Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School,
Starting point is 00:00:47 wrote two blog posts on his website, Legal Insurrection, which detailed some of the honest but negative history of Black Lives Matter. Students and faculty at Cornell complained, not that the posts were inaccurate, but instead that they were insensitive given the recent death of George Floyd. We spoke with Professor Jacobson on this show on July 1st, and he shared that a number of student groups on campus were trying to boycott his class and longtime friends and faculty members had quickly turned against him. Today, we speak with Professor Jacobson again to find out what transpired at Cornell and what his personal experience with cancel culture can tell us about the state of America's universities. And if you're enjoying this podcast,
Starting point is 00:01:34 please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and please encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Attorney General William Barr, who is stepping down this week, addressed in a press conference whether he plans to appoint a special counsel to look at 2020 election fraud or Hunter Biden. Via the Hill, here's what Barr had to say. The president has continued to make the case that they were fraud in the election. have already made your statement on that in an interview. Do you believe there's enough evidence to warrant appointing a special counsel to look into it,
Starting point is 00:02:22 something that he appears to be thinking about, perhaps Sidney Powell? Do you believe that there was any reason to do that? Have you already given your opinion on this to the president and of the White House? As you said, I've already commented on fraud. Let me just say that there are fraud in, unfortunately,
Starting point is 00:02:50 in most elections, I think we're too tolerant of it. And I'm sure there was fraud in this election. But I was commenting on the extent to which we had looked at suggestions or allegations of systemic or broad-based fraud that would affect the outcome of the election. And I already spoke to that. And I stand by that statement. But about the idea of appointing a special counsel, would you answer a question about whether you believe there's enough there, even with what you've already said, do you believe there's enough evidence to warrant a special counsel to investigate that, perhaps Sidney Powell or someone else?
Starting point is 00:03:27 Well, if I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool and was appropriate, I would name one, but I haven't, and I'm not going to. Attorney General William Barr says he believes Russia is behind last week's attack into several federal agencies. Speaking at a press conference Monday, Barr said he agreed with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's assessment of the hack. On Friday, Pompeo sat on the Mark Levine show. It was clear that Russia was responsible for hacking the third-party software developer Solar Winds. The perpetrators gained access to information from the Department of, of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Commerce Department. President Trump tweeted Saturday
Starting point is 00:04:18 that China may have been responsible for the hack, but neither Barr or Pompeo have publicly referenced China as a suspect. Barr did not go into any detail of the hack during Monday's press conference, saying only, from the information I have, I agree with Secretary Pompeo's assessment. It clearly appears to be the Russians, but I'm not going to discuss it beyond that. A massive spending bill, likely to be signed into law by President Trump soon, is poised to result in most Americans getting $600 from the federal government. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC, the good news is this is a very, very fast way of getting money into the economy. Let me emphasize, people are going to see this money at the money.
Starting point is 00:05:06 the beginning of next week. And so it's very fast. It's money that gets recirculated in the economy. People go out and spend this money and that helps small business and that helps getting more people back to work. Like the $1,200 checks earlier this year, it is for Americans making $75,000 or less, with those making fewer than six figures getting some portion of the 600. Parents will be able to get 600 per child with a max of 2,400 per household. President Trump's campaign filed a new petition with the Supreme Court Sunday, asking that the court reversed several cases having to do with Pennsylvania's mail-in ballots. Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said in a statement that the latest petition seeks all appropriate remedies,
Starting point is 00:05:57 including vacating the appointment of electors committed to Joseph Biden, and allowing the Pennsylvania General Assembly to select their replacements. It appears unlikely that the Supreme Court will take action on the petition, since they are not scheduled to meet together again until January 8th, and Congress is scheduled to count all 50 of the state's electoral votes two days prior on the 6th. A statue of Robert E. Lee has left the U.S. Capitol. Along with George Washington, it was one of Virginia's two statues in the Capitol. Each state is allowed to place two statues in the Capitol.
Starting point is 00:06:36 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, The Congress will continue our work to rid the Capitol of homages to hate as we fight to end the scourge of racism in our country. And there is no room for celebrating the bigotry of the Confederacy in the Capitol or any other place of honor in our country. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, said, per the Hill, the Confederacy is a symbol of Virginia's racist and divisive history, and it is past time we tell our story with images of perseverance, diversity, and inclusion. A statue of civil rights leader Barbara Johns will become Virginia's second statue in the Capitol.
Starting point is 00:07:19 Now stay tuned for my conversation with Professor William Jacobson as we discuss what transpired on the campus of Cornell Law School after he wrote two blog posts detailing the history. history of Black Lives Matter. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear some of the biggest names in American politics speak? Every day, the Heritage Foundation host webinars called Heritage Events Live. Webinar topics range from ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic to the CARES Act and the economy. These webinars are free and open to the public.
Starting point is 00:07:59 To find the latest webinars and register, visit heritage.org slash events. It is my pleasure to welcome back to the show, Professor William Jacobson, a Cornell Law professor, and the founder and publisher of legal insurrection. Professor Jacobson, welcome back to the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you for having me back. I appreciate it. So we last spoke almost exactly six months ago, and you shared about two blog posts, which you had written for legal insurrection, which detailed the history and kind of the true mission of Black Lives Matter being to further a Marxist agenda. Can you remind us just this
Starting point is 00:08:47 whole situation? What exactly was said, what you wrote in those blog posts? Yes, so I run a website called Legal Insurrection. And I've actually covered the Black Lives Matter movement since the Ferguson riots back in 2014. So I was very familiar with it. And I was very familiar with the shooting of Michael Brown and the controversy over it. So when George Floyd died, there were riots, everybody knows. That's not news. And one of the things I noticed was one of the themes of the marches was people walking with their hands raised above their heads chanting, don't shoot. And that was the Michael Brown hands up, don't shoot narrative. And I immediately recognized that to be false because I covered it at the time. I covered the Eric Holder Obama Justice Department report and investigation,
Starting point is 00:09:44 which said that never happened. His hands were not raised, and he wasn't saying don't shoot. In fact, he was shot and killed by the police because he punched a police officer in the face and tried to steal his gun. So I wrote a post, which I'd written before. I've covered this before. And I said, reminder, the Michael Brown hands up, don't shoot, is a fabricated narrative. That set off, that triggered a reaction at Cornell Law School where I teach and have taught for almost 13 years that led to alumni attempts to get me fired, led to letters or emails, I should say, to the dean. I also wrote a second post right after my first one, which dealt with the rioting and the looting. And I severely condemned it, and I pointed out that this was reflective of the goals of the leaders of the movement, which is to tear down our society, which are Marxist, and which are anti-capitalist. And so those two posts combined, but it was mostly the Michael Brown one that triggered it, but those two posts combined led to a concerted effort both to fire me and to denounce me and to otherwise damage.
Starting point is 00:11:04 me. So there was an email campaign by alumni, some alumni, obviously not thousands, but enough that the dean noticed to get me fired. They were extremely upset that in this emotional time period that I would write something like that about the Michael Brown case. They didn't dispute that I was right about it, but they felt it was highly insensitive and that to have someone like me on the faculty was inappropriate and he should take action. 21. of my colleagues signed a letter denouncing me in the Cornell Sun, the student newspaper. And in very harsh terms, essentially calling me racist, and they didn't name me in that letter to the Sun, but it was clear it was about me.
Starting point is 00:11:52 And in fact, the draft of the letter was circulated to students at the law school before it even appeared in the Cornell Sun. So everybody knew it was about me. And then students organized a boycott of my course. Fifteen student groups organized a boycott of my course. And then the dean issued a statement denouncing me, saying, I have academic freedom and I have job security. It's not tenure, but it's something similar. And therefore, they weren't going to take any disciplinary action against me.
Starting point is 00:12:25 But what horrible things I wrote and expressed in very pejorative terms. his view of me. So I think that that all came together and that's the beginning of the story. And I can certainly get into more detail as to what happened after it. Yeah. Well, if you would, I mean, you've set up very nicely. Thank you for just giving us that review of everything that happened. So at that point, I mean, what was kind of running through your head? Because like you say, you've been at Cornell Law. for almost 13 years. It's no secret that you're conservative. Everyone knows that on the campus. So, you know, where was kind of your thought process at as far as, you know, I don't know how this
Starting point is 00:13:16 is going to end. Am I going to have a job in a month? What were you processing? Right. Well, the attacks on me came as part of attacks on a lot of, I would say, non-liberal professors, maybe not even necessarily conservative after George Floyd. Any sort of criticism of Black Lives Matter, any sort of criticism of the rioting, was enough to whip up a online mob against people. So before this happened to me, I had witnessed it happened to other professors,
Starting point is 00:13:51 the change.org petition with thousands of signatures, the protests, all those sort of things. So I kind of knew what was coming, or what I feared would be coming. And so I had to make a decision. I could sit back and let it unfold, or I could be more proactive. And what pushed me from sitting back and watching it unfold
Starting point is 00:14:13 to being proactive is some people at the law school, I won't even identify them by student, faculty, staff, or otherwise. But some people at the law school were very upset with what they saw going on about me. And while they weren't willing to speak out publicly against it, they, because they didn't want to be targeted, they did forward to me internal communications, emails, text messages, things that were circulating at the law school. And then I realized that this wasn't going to go away. It wasn't just going to be a few alumni writing into the dean that the faculty who signed the letter against me, or at least some of them, were in fact coordinating
Starting point is 00:14:54 with the student groups. And so I decided that I couldn't just sit back and watch unfold with me, what had unfolded with so many others. So I wrote a blog post about what was happening, which went fairly viral. It got picked up. I was invited to, on to Laura Ingram's show, got picked up by a lot of radio shows, got picked up by podcasts, including the one I'm on now, which was extremely helpful. And so I decided to grab the narrative and to frame the issue as it properly should be framed, which is a complete intolerance for opposing viewpoints at Cornell law school, a mob mentality, a fairly classic cancel culture. A lot of people say, well, what's cancel culture? You just don't like being criticized. Well, cancel culture is using the power that people
Starting point is 00:15:50 have or think they have over your job and over your reputation to try to coerce you into not speaking or changing your view or apologizing. So it's coercion rather than persuasion. And in fact, when I wrote my first blog post about what was happening, I gave a challenge. I said that I will be willing to publicly debate and I am asking the law school to sponsor it when school resumes in the fall. And at that time, we didn't know if it would be in person or virtual a debate over Black Lives Matter. And I will debate a represent. of these student groups and whichever faculty member they choose. So it wasn't going to be me against a student. It would be me essentially against a faculty member of their choice plus a student of their choice. And I made that offer. That offer was immediately rejected. They have no interested in debating me. So this was not about criticism. If they wanted to criticize me, they would have had a perfect platform to do it. In fact, they would have had a platform that the whole law school could have seen. I asked that it be live streamed. So the rest, of the interested people could see it. And that was flatly rejected. So once this happened,
Starting point is 00:17:06 there was an absolute outpouring of support for me, really from around the country, but also from within the law school. I received several hundred. I haven't counted them, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails of support from people who saw me on TV or read about it. There was a fair amount of news coverage of it. And then there was a lot of people within the law. school, a lot of students who emailed me and said, look, I can't afford to put myself at risk of being called these horrible names on the internet like you're being called. But please understand that these student activists do not represent the whole school. They do not represent the whole student body. You have a lot of support within the building, but it's quiet support. Everybody is
Starting point is 00:17:54 afraid to speak out. And things developed and things percolated along. For a while, I didn't know what would happen with the student boycott. I mean, 15 student groups publicly announced that they were and circulated on law school list serves that I was not allowed to respond on. I asked the dean for permission to do it, never got a response as to using a student list to respond to these accusations. And so I didn't know what would happen. And as it turned out, we had a fairly normal signup.
Starting point is 00:18:28 It was almost like nothing happened with the boycott. We were oversubscribed several times over like we always are and filled the course. And so, but that is sort of the short term end of the story. But I continue to work in a very hostile work environment. I continue to work with people, almost every one of whom that I would have daily contact with if we were in person in session, you know, session. Everyone on my hallway signed a letter again. me. Not a single one of them approached me before they ran to the Cornell Sun. And some of these
Starting point is 00:19:05 people I'd known for over a decade. Some of them were newer and I didn't really know that well. But some of them I've known for over a decade. Some of them I would have classified as friends, not necessarily social friends. We didn't hang out on the weekends, that sort of thing. But they were work friends. Not one of them had the common human decency to approach me beforehand. So that's the environment I work in. Well, I mean, obviously, it's so encouraging that you do still have a job that students, even though they were being pressured by these 15 student groups to boycott your class, your classes were full, students wanted to get your perspective, to hear what you had to say in your classes. But obviously, that kind of situation, it takes a toll on anyone when you are put in this
Starting point is 00:19:51 position of kind of being attacked from all sides. And like you say, there's individuals who you thought were your friends who are now not even coming to you to ask for your perspective, but are running straight to the paper. How do you feel like this whole situation impacted you personally? Well, I don't want to downplay the stress. It was extremely stressful because I didn't know how it would play out when it first started. And I'd seen these other professors who even if they didn't get fired were really turned into pariahs on their campuses, could wouldn't walk alone because students would harass them, had people protesters outside their houses. There was somebody at University of Central Florida where they actually showed up at his house to
Starting point is 00:20:36 protest. And so I didn't really know, but I will tell you, it was extraordinarily stressful for a while. And it may have, I think it would have turned out differently if I didn't have job protection. I think the dean's statement that they're not going to take action against me. me because I have academic freedom as a faculty member and job protection actually was a very pernicious statement because it sends a message to all the people who don't have job protection that they are at risk. So it really, and I think that's the main downside here is that a lot of students from what they tell me say it's a still to this day a very hostile atmosphere at the law school.
Starting point is 00:21:25 that not a single faculty person spoke up about the boycott of my course, which is truly astounding. I mean, we have faculty members who say some really crazy things, both at the law school and at the university, and they never get treated by the administration the way that I was treated, and they certainly never get treated by students. I mean, we have people who occupy Wall Street supporters, that sort of craziness. And so I think it's a really negative atmosphere at the law school. With time, it is probably eased a little bit, but I don't think it's over. I don't think the students have given up.
Starting point is 00:22:02 I think the faculty members will hold a grudge. I think that my situation is I don't technically have tenure because clinical faculty at Cornell University, regardless of which school they're in, cannot have tenure. So at the law school, I have something that the American Bar Association requires, which is called job security, reasonably
Starting point is 00:22:25 equivalent of tenure. And what that means is presumptively renewable five-year contracts. That's kind of the equivalent of tenure, where your contract rolls over for another five years unless they have good cause to not renew it. And so mine is up in a year and a half, and I am fully expecting that fight and that battle because I think a lot of the faculty members who sign this malicious statement against me are going to try to sabotage me. So it's not over. by any means, but right now it's a little bit quiet, but I think it's probably a little bit of calm before the next storm. Did any of your colleagues or the dean or even any of the students that had spoken out against you, written those emails, did any of them come to you and say,
Starting point is 00:23:16 hey, you know, maybe I still agree with what I wrote, but I should have at least talked with you first? Or was there any sort of attempt to reach out and say, all right, we, we, we, we, we, do kind of see your side and maybe we should have handled it a little bit differently. Not a one. Not a single person. And, you know, the dean has caught a lot of flack. The National Association of Scholars wrote a scathing open letter demanding that he retracted the statement against me as far as I know he's not responded to that. The faculty who signed the letter were excoriated by Professor Jonathan Turley in a column at his website over the summer, which got many, many thousands of shares. It kind of went semi-viral in which he completely excoriated
Starting point is 00:24:03 them for damaging the, not just free speech in a technical First Amendment sense, but the ethos of free exchange of ideas that's supposed to take place in higher education. So I know they were very stung by those things. And I think they were particularly stung by Jonathan Turleys because he's a liberal. He's a liberal law professor who is willing to speak out against this cancel culture, which is conducted almost exclusively by liberals. And I know they took, they were really upset about that. And so no, but not one person has said, maybe we should have given you a phone call. I mean, they took issue with certain wording I used in my blog post. Not one of them contacted me and said, would you explain to us why you use that term or why you use that phrase or why you believe they're Marxists? Of course, I've been completely vindicated substantively on the Black Lives Matter movement since then. The rioting continued throughout summer. The leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, or at least the most visible. It's something of a dispersed movement. But the, the most prominent organization of the Black Lives Matter movement openly announced.
Starting point is 00:25:20 We are trained Marxist activists. There's really the defunding of the police became their call to action. So all of the criticisms I had of the movement and the criticisms were not that they support better policing. I'm in favor of that. Not that they were upset about what happened to George Floyd. I'm upset about that. I think the policemen are nonetheless. less entitled to due process in the presumption of innocent sense like any accused criminal. But what they tried to do is they tried to frame it and the dean tried to frame it that I was criticizing essentially a movement to better black lives. And that's not what my criticism was. So I've been vindicated, not a single faculty member, a single administrator, has said,
Starting point is 00:26:09 maybe we could have handled this better. Maybe we shouldn't have rushed. Maybe we reacted in a way that did not reflect well on Cornell law school. Maybe we've damaged students because Cornell University is already very low ranked in terms of student's sense of their ability to speak freely. The foundation for individual rights and two other organizations about six or seven weeks ago came out with a survey of schools. And Cornell ranked near the bottom of the 50 plus schools they surveyed. And in fact, Cornell, two-thirds of the students at Cornell in this survey said they do not feel free to speak openly on campus. So they, but there's no self-reflection, or at least none that's been shared with me by the people who created this atmosphere, who used me as the target of their
Starting point is 00:27:05 two minutes of hate, who used me for their political purposes. Not a single one has apologized, expressed to me any remorse, or has retracted their public statements against me. So why stay? Why do you feel that you want to, you know, continue to fight to be a professor and kind of that conservative holdout at Cornell? That's a good question. I think the answer is rather simple is I want to leave on my terms when I want to leave. And I have no plans to leave right now. I had no plans to leave right now. And I don't see why I should be forced to change my life because they are so intolerant and they are so malicious. Why should why should I have to do that? Why don't they leave? If they don't like having me in the building, they can leave if they don't
Starting point is 00:27:58 like it, but I'm not going to leave. I'm not going to leave voluntarily. And if they do try to interfere, in the renewal of my contract in a year and a half, I will take them to court over it. Well, what would you say to other students or professors who either have or will find themselves in a similar position? It's very tough. I was in a better position than 95 or 99% of the people who find themselves in my position. One, I did have a measure of job security. It's not tenure, but it's job.
Starting point is 00:28:34 security. So they would have been very hard pressed to terminate me for statements I made off campus. There's no accusation that I made anything anybody objects to in the course of my class. So they would have had a big legal problem if they did that. So I had job protection, but I also had a platform. I mean, I have a website. May not be as big as the daily signal, but we get a lot of traffic. We have hundreds of thousands of readers every month, several hundred thousand unique readers every month. And I also know a lot of people. I mean, in the 13 years, I mean, the website is almost as old as my job at Cornell. It was started in 2008. And in the course of 12 years, I've met a lot of people. And so when things were happening to me, people took notice and people wrote about it. And therefore,
Starting point is 00:29:30 for that publicity and that public disclosure, I think afforded me a certain level of protection and a certain level of support. I can't tell you, I mean, so many letters and emails of support by Cornell Law School alumni, by Cornell alumni, by people influential alumni in the university, and by the public. And so it's very tough.
Starting point is 00:30:02 It's easy for me to say, just stand up to them. But when you're going through the moment, I can't emphasize to you how stressful it is. If you remember, there was something in Washington, D.C., where a woman was sitting at a table, and there's a very famous short video clip and photos of a group surrounding her, screaming at her while she's sitting at the table at this restaurant, and pointing their fingers inches from her face. And that to me epitomizes what it's like to go through this. And the reason they were doing that is she refused to essentially pledge allegiance to the Black Lives Matter movement on the spot when she was sitting there at a restaurant.
Starting point is 00:30:49 And when you have that, when you're going through that, it really is in many ways an out-of-body experience. and it is very hard to keep your head in those situations. Fortunately, I did. I think the easiest thing for people to do is try to act like they do and lash out. But at all times I acted in a way that was both standing up for my rights, but also a very professional manner. There are a lot of names I could have named and put on the website and put out on the Internet of people who are involved here that I didn't do
Starting point is 00:31:23 because I don't want this. I did not want the distraction of other people now becoming a target of the Internet the way I was. I wanted to focus everything on the issue of the intolerant atmosphere and the misdeeds of faculty and administrators towards me and didn't want that deflected in any way. Now, I know that the dean of the law school is leaving. Do you have any hope that there will be a shift at all at Cornell law? And you might see a little bit more just of an openness to free thought and freedom of speech. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:32:09 I have to say the dean's conduct, Eduardo Pinaldi, was very surprising to me because I've always had extremely good relations with him. He has done things for me, which were frankly very kind in the past. And I was surprised, and he's been a big proponent of free speech and open dialogue. I think what happened is what happened to a lot of people in that moment in the weeks after George Floyd and the riots is they felt the need to placate the mob, to put it bluntly. And he didn't start this campaign against me. I don't know whether he supported it or not. I have a feeling probably he wishes it didn't happen. But it's in those moments where leadership really comes through or doesn't come through.
Starting point is 00:32:58 And the leadership that should have been shown was the leadership recently shown at the University of Chicago. A geophysics professor experienced something very similar to what I went through more recently, about a month ago, where students organized against him and all because he criticized whether their diversity hiring approach was effective. He wasn't criticizing diversity as a goal, but maybe we're not doing it the right way. And they organized against him and they tried to get him fired. And the president of the University of Chicago didn't do what the dean did to me, did not issue a statement denouncing him, but saying, we're not going to fire him because he's got
Starting point is 00:33:46 tenure. They simply issued a statement without even naming him, reaffirming the right of faculty to speak their mind on various issues, including issues with regard to diversity. And if that had been done with regard to me, I think that would have set a proper tone. So a mistake was made. Yes, the dean is leaving. He got a, if you want to call it a promotion or whatever you want to call it, he's going to become the president of Seattle University. So I don't know who will replace him. But I think the damage at the law school has been done. it will depend who they hire in place. I think that process has just started because this was something of a surprise announcement to most people.
Starting point is 00:34:30 So that process is just starting now. And it's a process that I plan to raise with whoever prospective candidates are my situation, not because it's me, but because we need to know how they're going to handle this. The next time there are student petitions, the next time there's an email campaign against a law professor. The next time there's a boycott of courses, the next time the law school email list serves are used to attack a professor without giving the professor the ability to respond via those email list serves. What is this person's going to be? So what are they going to do? And so this is not, this is something which I think the law school needs to address.
Starting point is 00:35:10 I don't know whether the provost of the university who ultimately will make the decision on who the dean's going to be, although the law school facts, faculty will, of course, have a lot of input on that. Whether he truly understands what has happened at the law school, I don't know that he doesn't or he does. I've not had that conversation with him. But somebody needs to understand that there is a toxic atmosphere when it comes to political matters at Cornell Law School and that you cannot take silence for meaning everything is okay. One of the reasons their silence is that students have been bullied and faculty have been bullied and staff have been bullied into not speaking contrary to the popular narrative for fear of being treated the way I was treated.
Starting point is 00:36:00 Professor Jacobson, we just really thank you for standing up for the truth and for being willing to be one of those people that really kind of stands in the fire of it all and says, I'm not going to back down. This is the truth. And, you know, like you say, that's not easy to do. that comes at great cost, but it's so, so critical to maintaining such a free, you know, having that freedom of speech on a college campus and creating an atmosphere where students do feel comfortable to speak out and have differences of opinions.
Starting point is 00:36:36 And we certainly encourage all of our listeners to check out your website, legalinsurrection.com, to read your post there and so many other wonderful authors that post on that site. and of course to also follow your work on Twitter at League LEG Insurrection. Professor Jacobson, thank you for your time. Great. Thank you for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast.
Starting point is 00:37:04 You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.

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