Not that I knew Ilya Shapiro well enough to believe I knew what was really going on in his head, but having followed him for some time, I felt I knew him well enough to know that while he was libertarian on the conservative side, he wasn’t racist. What he could be was too cavalier, a bit too cocky in his thrust. Sometimes it could manifest itself as snark. Other times, it was reckless.
The problem I had was that he was a very smart guy, smart enough not to be this reckless. And if it wasn’t reckless, then it was something else, something worse.
Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identify politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?
Because Biden said he’s only consider[ing] black women for SCOTUS, his nominee will always have an asterisk attached. Fitting that the Court takes up affirmative action next term.
These were two serial twits, and they were, at the most generous, tone-deaf. A less generous reading would be racist. What the hell could Ilya have been thinking when he decided to use the phrase “lesser black woman”? It’s not that the generous reading didn’t make some sense, that if Srinivasan was the best pick, then any other pick would be less than the best. Lesser.
Of course, the entire argument was flawed. There is never only one “best pick,” and Biden is hardly the first president to play the identity card for political gain. Reagan, anyone? As already argued here, the only question is whether the nominee is qualified, and there are, perhaps, 100, even 1000, qualified nominees, and they include all races and genders.
But what to do about it now? Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern pounded on Ilya’s twits and made sure Georgetown law, which had just hired Shapiro to be executive director of its Georgetown Center for the Constitution, was thrust into the controversy. Stern contends that it was not to get Ilya canceled, and that it’s not like Georgetown wouldn’t find out anyway. Regardless, the Dean sent out an email to the law school community condemning the twits.
For his part, Ilya apologized, deleted his twits and characterized them as “inartful.” He later sent an email to the Georgetown law community.
I sincerely and deeply apologize for some poorly drafted tweets I posted late Wednesday night. Issues of race are of course quite sensitive, and debates over affirmative action are always fraught. My intent was to convey my opinion that excluding potential Supreme Court candidates, most notably Chief Judge Srinivasan, simply because of their race or gender, was wrong and harmful to the long term reputation of the Court. It was not to cast aspersions on the qualifications of a whole group of people, let alone question their worth as human beings. A person’s dignity and worth simply do not, and should not, depend on any immutable characteristic. Those who know me know that I am sincere about these sentiments, and I would be more than happy to meet with any of you who have doubts about the quality of my heart.
In seeking to join the Georgetown community, I wanted to contribute to your worthy mission to educate students, inform the public, and engage in the battle of legal ideas that lead to justice and fairness. I still want to do that. Recklessly framed tweets like this week’s obviously don’t advance that mission, for which I am also truly sorry. Regardless of whether anyone agrees or disagrees with me on a host of legal and policy issues, I can and will do better with regard to how I communicate my positions.
FIRE has taken up the cause of Shapiro not being fired, as a matter of free speech and academic freedom, but these concerns didn’t blunt the requisite student demand to fire Ilya.
But apologies and contrition are no longer enough, it seems. On Friday, the Black Law Students Association, speaking on behalf of a dozen student groups, wrote to insist that the school rescind Shapiro’s job offer among many other demands. That’s because these days, sincere apologies do not function as expressions of regret but as confessions of guilt.
Bari Weiss raises the question of whether a sincere apology serves any purpose other than to prove guilt and impose punishment. This is an odd period in woke history where many will be more willing, perhaps even desirous, to forgive a murderer his trespass than an ugly twit. Some might raise a question of proportionality, but that would likely be dismissed as the view of the privileged, as there’s an excuse for everything.
Ilya’s twit was bad. Flawed even in its attempt at snark, and offensively tone-deaf for someone who has spent more than enough time on social media to grasp how it would be taken, although I have the sense that his not considering himself to be racist empowered him to be reckless, believing he could express himself this way and people wouldn’t take it “wrong.” He was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Weiss compares Shapiro’s twit to a 2018 twit by Georgetown professor Carol Christine Fair, which was objectively horrific and violent. Georgetown defended her right to speak. But the comparison isn’t entirely apt, as Fair was already a professor. While Ilya had signed a contract with Georgetown, it remains executory. He’s in that purgatory of a person hired but yet to start the job.
From the perspective of free speech and academic freedom, there should be little question that Shapiro’s twit should have no consequences on his employment. From the “moral” perspective, he screwed up bigly, but was not intentionally racist and sincerely apologized for his recklessness.
There remains a pragmatic concern for Georgetown law, whether its students will shun their new hire, exercising their right not to participate in courses or clinics where Ilya Shapiro serves. Whether the students are right or wrong is irrelevant. You can’t make them sign up to take courses from Ilya Shapiro if they don’t want to because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that his twits are unforgivable.
Ilya Shapiro was scheduled to start on February 1st. This could be used as a teaching opportunity for Georgetown Law School, regardless of the demands of some of its students and the likelihood that Ilya will be shunned, at least at first. That would be the best lesson, painful though it will be for all involved. And it’s a lesson Ilya Shapiro, as well as the law school and students, need to learn.
Update: Georgetown Law School dean Bill Treanor, who previously condemned Ilya’s twit, has decided to put Ilya on administrative leave to investigate. A twit.
Personally I thought it was pretty apparent that he was alluding to the capability of the known set of black woman judges compared to the capability of his preferred candidate. It was very poorly phrased as you note. And the group of people who will call you racist for making the OK sign were certain to jump all over this in order to remind themselves of their imagined moral superiority.
Biden could have saved us this distraction (and not diminished his ultimate nominee) by simply keeping his mouth shut and doing what he intends to do. Unfortunately he and his staff couldn’t pass another opportunity to appeal to progressive Twitter.
In the words of our esteemed host, “Reagan, anyone?”
What also could have saved us this distraction was Ilya not sending the tweet?
True, but there’s the Iyla distraction and the bigger distraction of awarding the appointment to someone specifically due to their race and gender, to the exclusion of all others. Billions of pixels are being wasted on this.
And ultimately Biden did his nominee a disservice, which is not helpful. Or fair.
Sure. But this post was about Ilya’s tweet, no?
I think this post is the one you are looking for:
https://blog.simplejustice.us/2022/01/27/the-wrong-question-for-justice-breyers-successor/
This is the bonus point of Biden’s vocal choice, to troll an opponent into just this sort of stumble. Shapiro took the the bait.
Absent-minded professor trope. Any “racism” is just more of the water we are expected to swim in, but the foolishness will get you eaten. He could have made his point about Srinivasan without picking on black women, and let context carry the day.
But his argument remains a dumb, self-defeating one that puts asterisks by every judge’s name on the basis of anybody’s “Truth,” and parallels his adversaries’ own arguments about why this time the asterisk would be corrective* instead of more of the same.
*for one underrepresented demographic at least, the others might as well be white so screw them
John Marshall; Roger Taney; Salmon Chase; Hugo Black; Earl Warren; Warren Burger. Not an Ivy League degree among them. Robert Jackson got a “certificate of completion” for demonstration of some legal knowledge plus a one year session at Albany Law School. Benjamin Cardozo wasn’t high on Hoover’s list to take Holmes’s place notwithstanding having been acclaimed the outstanding appellate judge available “because there’s already a New Yorker on the court (snicker).”
Speaking of Holmes, he allegedly said of FDR that he had a “second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.” Perhaps that criterion is a good one for SCOTUS candidates, too.
Hi Jim. Your comment says nothing at all, isn’t on topic, isn’t funny, and isn’t illuminating in any way. Please don’t do this again. Jumbled thoughts and free association belong somewhere else.
Sometimes a comment jumps out as particularly bad and bothers me enough for me to get pissy. Congrats on winning the prize today. And I’m down to scrap it out if you’d like, but I’d rather you either did better in the future or just disappeared instead. Thanks and good luck.
Harsh, PK. Very harsh. Even if it wasn’t the best comment, it didn’t make anyone stupider.
Yes, there’s hope for poor Jim, that’s why I nipped at his ankles or huffed and puffed or whatever it is I’m doing. Others are lost causes, as you try to remind me from time to time.
I am trending to your side and am closer to begging the host to come back than before, if you’re keeping score.
I thought it was a useful comment.
I’m sorry, but have you now been deputized to decide who should or shouldn’t do what again? Are you threatening Jim with something, or simply trying to dictate terms for this forum by force of name?
If you’ve now become hall monitor, I expect the principal will let us know.
No. I was making a comment. You’ll notice the use of the word “please” making my statement a request of poor Jim which he is free to disregard. The rest is my opinion of what he said.
I’ve backed off considerably but will be happy to discuss why Jim’s comment is such shit. If everyone did what he did, this would not work. It isn’t fucking random trivia time, or at least it isn’t supposed to be.
Please come back, please.
As usual, FIRE is correct for standing up for free speech principles and good on them for being consistent in their approach and perhaps passing the IIya test. Social media has leveled the playing field so it’s going to be a bit of an ongoing whack-a-mole game for them.
Overall though, I’m dubious about some of these recently minted advocates of free speech principles as I get a strong whiff of “it ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun” from them. Some of these folks like Weiss, Sullivan, the Reason magazine crew, et al., have spent years and decades running off “liberal” professors, performers, athletes, politicians, etc. but are now principled free speech warrriors railing against cancel culture. Sure. Perhaps they can get some insights about cancel culture from Mattress Girl at their next hang out session. Anyway, they are calling for grace for IIya, and rightfully so, but I wouldn’t trust them as far as…you know the rest. They had no problem leading the mob before and will lead it again when they feel their oxes are being gored.
Criticizing isn’t “running off” anyone. Criticizing is fair game. Demanding a third party, Georgetown Law here, is cancel culture. None of the people you cite (without pointing to a single fact to support your claim) have been party to cancel culture, but only fair criticism. Don’t be a simpleton.
As I said, I agree with FIRE’s position but, c’mon now….you’re not actually trying to pretend that the long documented history of the conservative version of what’s now being called “cancel culture” – say in recent times from William Buckley’s Young Americans for Freedom (now the Young America’s Foundation) onward – was and are just mere “fair criticisms” and not calls for third party action against their targets (e.g. Dixie Chicks, Colin Kapernick, banning of Maus and running off people like Norman Finklestein and too many other academics/professors to mention and on and on)? Big and little examples abound. If that’s the case, along with also pretending you don’t know the history and hypocrisy of Weiss, Sullivan, etc., you’re simply arguing in bad faith and engaging in empty posturing. Very few hands are clean in this debate.
Go fish.
Ignoring your broader attempt at spraying squid ink over differences between criticism, changes in school curriculum, outright government bans, and appeals to punishment or firing by third parties, as if these were all the same thing, what does Norman Finkelstein have to do with any kind of conservative cancel culture? That issue was between Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz, a lifelong liberal with very pro-Israel positions, while Finkelstein is more pro-Palestinian. It might be fair to view these positions as right-wing (Dershowitz) and left-wing (Finkelstein) in the context of domestic Israeli politics, but don’t try mapping them on to American political camps.
As bad tweets go this was pretty bad.
As apologies go this one was really good.
For people that know Shapiro and his previous publications this should be enough.
One problem i can see we judge Shapiro from inside our bubble, everyone here knows him and know he is not a racist. If that tweet is the first time you hear of him… first impressions are notoriously hard to change.
A lot of Georgetown students that dont do law might wonder why the hell that guy is teaching at their school.
Just trying to see both sides, I 100% believe that he should not be fired and that apology was great. I am saving that for when i make a giant mistake.
“apologies and contrition are no longer enough”
Apologies and contrition only encourage the mob. The only way to survive as a “conservative” on social media is to never say anything that you aren’t willing to defend, and to never apologize.
Show me someone who never says anything that is dumb and you will show me someone who is dead.
Gaffé – when someone accidently says the truth in public.
I see what you did, but this post isn’t going to get you appointed to SCOTUS. Not now. Not ever.
An investigator. Given that the tweets were in writing, and the policies were in writing, what does the investigator have to investigate to determine if the tweets were in violation of the policies? One would think the law school dean could read the tweet and would know the policies.
I think “investigator” now can mean “diversity consultant”, because they’ll go around campus and “investigate” how minority students feel about Prof. Shapiro’s tweets. Also a prime opportunity to hand six figures or more worth of school dollars over to someone with the right political or social connections.
He’s holding a “sit-in” today to listen the students’ express their feelings about Shapiro.