Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon reports on relatively good news emerging from the Ivy League.
“Engaging in good faith discussion”—that is how Harvard Law School titled a profile of Jacob Richards, the outgoing president of its Federalist Society chapter. The piece, published April 27 by the law school’s communications office, was effectively a targeted advertisement for center-right applicants, featuring gushing quotes from Richards about the open-mindedness of his class.
“I came into law school wondering if I’d get shunned for voicing conservative views,” Richards said. “Instead, I’ve found that most of my peers are eager and willing to engage.”
Then came the leak.
The law school featured the profile on its Instagram account on May 11, one week after news broke that the Supreme Court has circulated a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. That timing didn’t sit well with Gabrielle Crofford, the outgoing president of Harvard Law School’s student body, who urged anybody upset that the law school had kind words for a conservative to complain to the communications office. …
… The school received multiple emails—”probably in the dozens.” …
… Initially, the blow-up seemed to follow a familiar script: milquetoast remarks from a center-right lawyer, followed by furious demands for administrators to enforce orthodoxy. Many law schools have capitulated to those demands: from Yale Law School, which threatened to discipline a conservative student for using the term “trap house,” to Georgetown Law School, which placed a professor on leave for criticizing affirmative action on the Supreme Court.
At Harvard, though, administrators refused to remove the post and told Richards they had his back.
“I am very sorry that you have received such critical comments,” Jackson, the law school communications dean, wrote Richards in an email. “We were pleased to share your story.”
That resolve, students say, reflects Harvard Law’s size and staffing decisions, which have inoculated it against the ideological mania of rival law schools—especially Yale.