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Boorish Stanford DEI dean doubles down, refuses to apologize, boasts about harassment of federal judge

March 24, 2023 | | Print Article

The Stanford University associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion who ambushed a conservative judge at a recent law school event is out with an op-ed defending her role in the dust-up that happened.

As previously reported, earlier this month Stanford Law School’s chapter of the Federalist Society invited Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan to speak at their campus.

In response, student activists who resent Duncan for having refused in 2020 to allow a transgender pedophile to change his name to that of a female protested loudly and obnoxiously, disrupting the Federalist Society’s event.

Amid the disruption, DEI dean Tirien Steinbach was called in to de-escalate the situation. But instead, she launched into a pre-prepared, six-minute-long speech in which she attacked the judge.

Since the event, critics have called for Steinbach’s firing.

And now, lo and behold, Steinbach is out with an op-ed essentially arguing that she doesn’t deserve to be fired but rather praised.

“As soon as Judge Duncan entered the room, a verbal sparring match began to take place between the judge and the protesters. By the time Judge Duncan asked for an administrator to intervene, tempers in the room were heated on both sides,” she wrote.

“I stepped up to the podium to deploy the de-escalation techniques in which I have been trained, which include getting the parties to look past conflict and see each other as people. My intention wasn’t to confront Judge Duncan or the protesters but to give voice to the students so that they could stop shouting and engage in respectful dialogue,” she continued.

“I wanted Judge Duncan to understand why some students were protesting his presence on campus and for the students to understand why it was important that the judge be not only allowed but welcomed to speak,” she added.

But critics say this is a false equivalence that makes it seem like the judge was somehow in the wrong as much as the disruptive protesters, when in fact he wasn’t in the wrong at all.

Steinbach continued the op-ed by bragging further about her alleged “de-escalation” tactics.

“To defuse the situation I acknowledged the protesters’ concerns; I addressed the Federalist Society’s purpose for inviting Judge Duncan and the law school’s desire to uphold its right to do so; I reminded students that there would be a Q&A session at which they could answer Judge Duncan’s speech with their own speech, as long as they were following university rules; and I pointed out that while free speech isn’t easy or comfortable, it’s necessary for democracy, and I was glad it was happening at our law school,” she wrote.

She then questioned the importance of freedom of speech.

“At one point during the event, I asked Judge Duncan, ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’ I was referring to the responsibility that comes with freedom of speech: to consider not only the benefit of our words but also the consequences. It isn’t a rhetorical question. I believe that we would be better served by leaders who ask themselves, ‘Is the juice (what we are doing) worth the squeeze (the intended and unintended consequences and costs)?’ I will certainly continue to ask this question myself,” she wrote.

Steinbach concluded the op-ed by calling for society to “strike a balance between free speech and diversity, equity and inclusion.”

This particular line did not sit well with critics:

Their point was that “inclusion” and “diversion” and all these other “woke” concepts are anathema to and ultimately incompatible with free speech.

This in turn suggests that having a dean of DEI at a university is perhaps not such a great idea …

Vivek Saxena
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