Georgetown professors demand "safe space" because students "traumatized" by criticism of Scalia

[DetlefK]

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/23/georgetown-law-professors-complain-conservative-students-are-traumatized-by-criticisms-of-scalia-demand-remedies/

On the day the death of Justice Antonin Scalia was announced, Georgetown Law School issued an official statement and press release headlined “Georgetown Law Mourns the Loss of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.” It quoted the school’s dean, William M. Treanor, heaping unqualified praise on the highly controversial justice.

...

A full two days after Scalia’s death, Professor Peller wrote an email — first to the dean and the faculty, and thereafter to the entire law school — explaining his dissent from the dean’s praise. Like a huge number of Americans generally, and legal professionals particularly, Professor Peller viewed Scalia’s role on the Supreme Court as toxic in the extreme, and he explained why.

Professor Peller wrote that he was “put off” by the official statement praising Scalia, and that he “imagine[s] many other faculty, students, and staff, particularly people of color, women, and sexual minorities, cringed at [the] headline and at the unmitigated praise with which the press release described a jurist that many of us believe was a defender of privilege, oppression, and bigotry, one whose intellectual positions were not brilliant but simplistic and formalistic.”

...

But two conservative law professors on the Georgetown faculty are indignant that this debate took place at all. The right-wing duo, Randy Barnett and Nick Rosenkranz (a senior Rubio adviser), sent their own email denouncing Peller’s anti-Scalia statement: not on substantive grounds that he was wrong on the merits about Scalia, but insisting that he had no right to criticize Scalia at all.

...

"To hear from one’s colleagues, within hours of the death of a hero, mentor, and friend, that they resent any implication that they might mourn his death — that, in effect, they are glad he is dead — is simply cruel beyond words."

...

"Although this email was upsetting to us, we could only imagine what it was like for these students. Some of them are 22-year-old 1Ls, less than six months into their legal education. But we did not have to wait long to find out. Leaders of the Federalist Society chapter and of the student Republicans reached out to us to tell us how traumatized, hurt, shaken, and angry, were their fellow students."

[bigwillq]

1. I don't believe in "safe space" for anyone

For Scalianites, for anti-Scalianites, for blacks, for gays, for straights, for women, for men.

In the real world, there are no safe spaces. When you're an adult, you learn to deal with people that disagree with you.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. The students will cope just fine.

It's conservative law professors who are projecting their own angst on others who should be investigated, IMO.

Full disclosure: I'm a GU law alum.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Good grief!

Get a grip, you tender little 22-year-old 1Ls. If you are going to practice law you'll have to be made of tougher stuff than that. Many lawyers see really ugly shit on a daily basis - you can't be a delicate snowflake in need of smelling salts just because somebody criticized your favorite Supreme Court justice.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. This is not the tender 22 year olds

Though law school students are slightly older...this is their profs

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. Then that's even more ridiculous.

The professors need to get out in the real world a bit more, or else they need to stop projecting their own angst about people picking on their favorite dead judge.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. This safe space none sense

Is the result of the infantilizing of the American people. It's not just in colleges and universities. We will see the final result and it won't be pretty

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. I agree 100%.

It's one thing to be reasonably sensitive to people's feelings about difficult matters, but it's something else altogether to protect them completely from anything they might find disturbing. Life kicks everybody in the butt sooner or later and colleges are not doing their students any favors by packing them in emotional bubble-wrap. The inevitable butt-kicking is much tougher to bear if you had no idea it would ever happen.

[Maraya1969]

4. To hear "That they are glad he is dead" Is this lawyer talk for "I don't like what you wrote"

[Orrex]

5. "glad that he is dead" doesn't begin to describe my joy

His death might very well be the best thing to happen to the US in decades.

It's such a glorious event, in fact, that it wholly overrules any sympathy I might feel for his mourning friends or family.

Show me where to find these pro-Scalia "safe spaces," and I will happily go there to express my joy.

[Rex]

8. Lemme know when you get the list, I want to come along and express my joy too.

I am glad they are crying over that lump of shit's death. Gonna be hard to find another fundie like him that can be placed on the bench...I'd say impossible since Obama won't do any such thing, at most he will pick a moderate. Hopefully just to piss them off more and it should help us win next year.

[Orrex]

11. Definitely. I even have a spare bullhorn that you can use

Say it loud, say it proud!

[Rex]

7. Fuck them, little babies crying over Reagan the II death...cry me a river.

I am glad his death has caused all these worthless GOPukers to come out of the woodwork in praise of their bigoted, sexist leader. That's right, Reagan is gone and has no more influence on the court! Suck it up.

Repukes always cry the loudest, they are born losers like their now dead leader. The Reagnites are a bunch of cowardly fuckwads, I wish they would all realize he is gone and now Reagan V2 is no more either.

Deal with it?

And Obama WILL get a progressive on the court to take Fuckfaces place! Deal with it?

[Paladin]

10. Federalist Society, student republicans?

Boo-fucking-hoo. More power to Professor Peller and other legal scholars who see Scalia for the cruel and destructive trash that he was. Georgetown Law has slipped a whole bunch of notches in my opinion, because of this incident.