Even with the Court majority checking box after box on the Project 2025 to-do list, conservatives are interested in maintaining the position that their views are censored or that they are being ostracized just for sharing them. This is a silly position, of course. Actual censorship would look like the government disappearing plaques that recognize the existence of slavery or stripping information about Black and female veterans from government websites. It would look like the White House having a snitch list for left-leaning media sources. Actual ostracizing would look like excluding whatever legacy media refuses to be lapdogs from the White House or, I don’t know, literally bragging about how many people you’re deporting despite some of them having been born here.
Conservative oppression, to the degree that it exists, is measured by their feelings. I have no doubt in my mind that Amy Wax feels like a free speech warrior for speaking disparagingly about her students and inviting white supremacists to speak in her classroom, but the First Amendment isn’t a blank check to foster a hostile learning environment for your students. The things we say and do have social consequences, and it seems that so much “conservative censorship” boils down to “I can’t believe you’d let opinions get in the way of our friendship” when the opinion is “Racially profiling apparent Mexicans is cool and great, actually.”
A recent survey of ~2,000 law professors appears to show that conservative law professors are afraid to speak their minds. Reuters has coverage:
More than half of the surveyed faculty members — 56% — reported at least occasionally feeling unable to express their opinions for fear of how students, colleagues or administrators would react, according to a report released Tuesday by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit free speech advocacy group.
What follows are some percentages that stuck out to me:
Conservative faculty members reported the most pressure to self-censor, at 72%. That compared with 60% among moderates and 50% among liberal faculty, reinforcing the common perception that law schools are skewed toward liberal students and professors…81% said a liberal individual would be a positive fit at their law school, while only 44% said a conservative person would be a good fit…Conservative law faculty were more than three times as likely as liberal law faculty to report that they at least occasionally hide their political beliefs from other faculty in a bid to keep their jobs.
Is it fair to read that the data reinforces the perception that law schools are skewed toward liberals? I think what’s happening is that institutions of learning are skewed toward civility and conservative in-group behavior has become aggressively anti-civil since the Trump era. Take the 81% of professors believing a liberal would be a positive fit compared to 44% believing a conservative would point. While I don’t know the political leanings of the chompy Biglaw associate, I do know that a good chunk of the stories I’ve seen across my tenure at ATL involving students of conservative political leanings don’t paint the best pictures of sociability. Remember the fried chicken trap house FedSoc event a couple years ago at Yale? Conservative students. The White supremacist constitutional law paper that said voting rights should be culled and people may have to die to secure the White America the founders intended? Conservative student and judge. I use conservative there broadly — all sorts of alt-right or outright fascists crowd under the conservative umbrella. “Liberal” students just aren’t doing those sorts of things. You might get an occasional “The Rule of Law is good” or “Journalists and literal infants should not be routinely shot in the head as a government’s anti-terrorism initiative,” but none of that compares to campus Republican leaders getting caught in racist group chats. No shit conservatives might not fit in as well as the average liberal — one of their calling cards is bragging about how rude they get to be to people. Remember Joe Rogan rejoicing that people can say r***** again because Trump was back in office? What would the liberal equivalent even be? Now that Mamdani is mayor, I can openly refer to strangers as neighbor? One of these is obviously more pleasant to be around.
This isn’t a free speech thing, campus or otherwise. Conservatives in general aren’t that pleasant to be around for extended periods of time. That’s part of why they’re having such a shitty time on dating apps and why they keep complaining that so-and-so won’t have dinner with them for Thanksgiving. The guy who couldn’t care less if the EPA was disbanded and nothing prevented companies from forcing us to drink sludge out of our tap water doesn’t excel at interactions requiring empathy and keeping up common niceties. Surprise, surprise. That doesn’t change if you’re a student or a professor. Liberals, annoying as they may be, are at least socially savvy enough to refer to you as you’d like to be referred to without getting turned into a meme for cursing out Elliot Page.
Unless liberals have a monopoly on civility, the self-censorship data as presented shouldn’t be enough to “reinforce” the idea that law schools are skewed against conservatives. Especially when there are things that point to the contrary like law professors and deans getting punished because they didn’t lick the boot hard enough or deans who may have lost their job because they are openly gay.
White Law Student Has Multi-Million Discrimination Suit Against Howard University Thrown Out
Tenured Law Professor Allegedly Removed From Class Over Political Comments
Fired Arkansas Law Dean Gets Wave Of Support From Law Professors
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn’t hurt either. You can reach him by email at christopherrashadwilliams@gmail.com and by Tweet/Bluesky at @WritesForRent.
The post Even If Law Professors Are Self-Censoring, Let’s Not Rush To Any Conclusions About ‘Liberal Bias’ appeared first on Above the Law.
Even with the Court majority checking box after box on the Project 2025 to-do list, conservatives are interested in maintaining the position that their views are censored or that they are being ostracized just for sharing them. This is a silly position, of course. Actual censorship would look like the government disappearing plaques that recognize the existence of slavery or stripping information about Black and female veterans from government websites. It would look like the White House having a snitch list for left-leaning media sources. Actual ostracizing would look like excluding whatever legacy media refuses to be lapdogs from the White House or, I don’t know, literally bragging about how many people you’re deporting despite some of them having been born here.
Conservative oppression, to the degree that it exists, is measured by their feelings. I have no doubt in my mind that Amy Wax feels like a free speech warrior for speaking disparagingly about her students and inviting white supremacists to speak in her classroom, but the First Amendment isn’t a blank check to foster a hostile learning environment for your students. The things we say and do have social consequences, and it seems that so much “conservative censorship” boils down to “I can’t believe you’d let opinions get in the way of our friendship” when the opinion is “Racially profiling apparent Mexicans is cool and great, actually.”
A recent survey of ~2,000 law professors appears to show that conservative law professors are afraid to speak their minds. Reuters has coverage:
More than half of the surveyed faculty members — 56% — reported at least occasionally feeling unable to express their opinions for fear of how students, colleagues or administrators would react, according to a report released Tuesday by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit free speech advocacy group.
What follows are some percentages that stuck out to me:
Conservative faculty members reported the most pressure to self-censor, at 72%. That compared with 60% among moderates and 50% among liberal faculty, reinforcing the common perception that law schools are skewed toward liberal students and professors…81% said a liberal individual would be a positive fit at their law school, while only 44% said a conservative person would be a good fit…Conservative law faculty were more than three times as likely as liberal law faculty to report that they at least occasionally hide their political beliefs from other faculty in a bid to keep their jobs.
Is it fair to read that the data reinforces the perception that law schools are skewed toward liberals? I think what’s happening is that institutions of learning are skewed toward civility and conservative in-group behavior has become aggressively anti-civil since the Trump era. Take the 81% of professors believing a liberal would be a positive fit compared to 44% believing a conservative would point. While I don’t know the political leanings of the chompy Biglaw associate, I do know that a good chunk of the stories I’ve seen across my tenure at ATL involving students of conservative political leanings don’t paint the best pictures of sociability. Remember the fried chicken trap house FedSoc event a couple years ago at Yale? Conservative students. The White supremacist constitutional law paper that said voting rights should be culled and people may have to die to secure the White America the founders intended? Conservative student and judge. I use conservative there broadly — all sorts of alt-right or outright fascists crowd under the conservative umbrella. “Liberal” students just aren’t doing those sorts of things. You might get an occasional “The Rule of Law is good” or “Journalists and literal infants should not be routinely shot in the head as a government’s anti-terrorism initiative,” but none of that compares to campus Republican leaders getting caught in racist group chats. No shit conservatives might not fit in as well as the average liberal — one of their calling cards is bragging about how rude they get to be to people. Remember Joe Rogan rejoicing that people can say r***** again because Trump was back in office? What would the liberal equivalent even be? Now that Mamdani is mayor, I can openly refer to strangers as neighbor? One of these is obviously more pleasant to be around.
This isn’t a free speech thing, campus or otherwise. Conservatives in general aren’t that pleasant to be around for extended periods of time. That’s part of why they’re having such a shitty time on dating apps and why they keep complaining that so-and-so won’t have dinner with them for Thanksgiving. The guy who couldn’t care less if the EPA was disbanded and nothing prevented companies from forcing us to drink sludge out of our tap water doesn’t excel at interactions requiring empathy and keeping up common niceties. Surprise, surprise. That doesn’t change if you’re a student or a professor. Liberals, annoying as they may be, are at least socially savvy enough to refer to you as you’d like to be referred to without getting turned into a meme for cursing out Elliot Page.
Unless liberals have a monopoly on civility, the self-censorship data as presented shouldn’t be enough to “reinforce” the idea that law schools are skewed against conservatives. Especially when there are things that point to the contrary like law professors and deans getting punished because they didn’t lick the boot hard enough or deans who may have lost their job because they are openly gay.
White Law Student Has Multi-Million Discrimination Suit Against Howard University Thrown Out
Tenured Law Professor Allegedly Removed From Class Over Political Comments
Fired Arkansas Law Dean Gets Wave Of Support From Law Professors
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn’t hurt either. You can reach him by email at christopherrashadwilliams@gmail.com and by Tweet/Bluesky at @WritesForRent.
The post Even If Law Professors Are Self-Censoring, Let’s Not Rush To Any Conclusions About ‘Liberal Bias’ appeared first on Above the Law.
