Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is calling for a review by Texas officials of the fitness of certain Stanford University law school graduates who protested a conservative judge's speech engagement on the campus. Cruz expressed his concern in a letter to Texas officials about whether the students who disrupted the appearance of Kyle Duncan of the U.S. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit exhibited "proper respect for the role of a judge, or the temperament to practice law". The Stanford Daily reported that audience members at the event, called "The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: COVID, guns and Twitter", had fliers arguing that Duncan had pushed for laws that harm women, immigrants and LGBTQ individuals and had continuously interrupted Duncan, called him racist and yelled "crude sexual slurs". In response to this, Dean Jenny Martinez of the law school denounced the protest and said the school was reviewing the incident and committed to the conduct of events on terms that are consistent with their disruption policy and principles of free speech and critical inquiry they support. Cruz is calling for the Texas Bar to take special care of graduating students of Stanford Law School and urged that they are forced to state in writing if they participated in the protest, and the Texas Supreme Court and the Board should decide what the "proper remedy" should be. Cruz's letter has sparked a debate over the limits of free speech and the responsibility of students and schools to ensure respectful discourse.
POLITICS
TED CRUZ
TEXAS BAR