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Nearly three weeks after a March 10 protest disrupted speakers at Yale Law School, university officials criticized students for their behavior while acknowledging that those students did not violate Yale’s free expression policy.
The issue arose when Yale students protested a panel that included Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom, an advocacy group that often takes legal positions in opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. Students at the event shouted over Waggoner and jeered a moderator who reminded them of Yale’s free speech policies. Ultimately students left the event after a warning but continued to protest noisily in the hallway.
Yale Law School dean Heather K. Gerken described the behavior as “unacceptable,” noting in a Monday email to the campus community that it violated Yale’s norms but fell short of a disciplinary offense.
“In accordance with the University’s free expression policy, which includes a three-warning protocol, those protesting exited the room after the first warning, and the event went forward. Had the protestors shut down the event, our course of action would have been straightforward—the offending students without question would have been subject to discipline,” Gerken wrote.
Gerken also chastised students for the way they treated professor Kate Smith and dean Mike Thompson, who tried to restore order, adding, “This is not how lawyers interact.”
“I expect far more from our students, and I want to state unequivocally that this cannot happen again,” Gerken wrote. “My administration will be in serious discussion with our students about our policies and norms for the rest of the semester.”
Gerken also took aim at recent media coverage, which has included multiple segments on Fox News and op-eds discouraging judges from hiring student protesters who disrupted the event.
“In our statement-hungry culture, university leaders are constantly asked to be referees, encouraging our students to appeal to a higher authority rather than to engage with one another and tempting outsiders to enlist academic institutions in their own political agendas,” Gerken wrote. “Statements are expected instantly from institutions whose core values include deliberation and due process—values that are essential where, as here, the reporting has been so contradictory. And pundits parse any statement to see which side they favor when the role of a university is not to take sides but to articulate its mission with clarity.”
