Remember back in March when Judge Kyle Duncan was shouted down and driven out of finishing a speech at Stanford Law School?

It was quite a scandal. It led to some, it turns out fake, soul searching at Stanford, the refusal of other judges to consider Stanford Law students as clerks, a lawsuit filed by a liberal lawyer, and a commitment from the Law School to return to its values as an institution dedicated to free speech.

John, Ed, and I covered the controversy pretty heavily back then because it was emblematic of just how fascist academia has become in shouting down and canceling anybody who is to the right of Karl Marx.

A lot of people, including me, were skeptical that Stanford would actually change its stripes, and we turned out to be right.

Aaron Sibarium, upon whose excellent reporting we all relied, has a new story about the developments at Stanford.

Stanford’s Law School Dean was elevated to the position of Provost (Red Flag #1), opening up the position of Dean at the Law School. Stanford just announced the members of the search committee, and behold!: one of the members is a student who leads one of the groups that sponsored the protest that sparked the controversy.

The only student on the law school’s search committee, Matthew Coffin is the co-president of Stanford OutLaw, the LGBT student group that led efforts in March to disrupt a Federalist Society event featuring Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 31, 2023

Now THAT is proof that Stanford intends to mend its ways!

Perhaps Stanford believes that forcing anybody to serve on a committee serves as a punishment, but given what I know about academia, I am sure that everybody involved believes this appointment to be prestigious.

Go figure. I would run away from being on a committee, but perhaps that is why I never fit into any organization well.

It is not clear how Stanford chose the committee, whose members were announced Oct. 4. But students say Coffin’s appointment is a betrayal of the promise, made by Martinez in a 10-page memo about the Duncan brouhaha, that the law school would recommit itself to free expression.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 31, 2023

I think we all know why Coffin was appointed to the committee, and it had less to do with his being the next great Supreme Court justice and more to do with identity politics. DEI trumps all else in academia, although I am mildly surprised that they didn’t pick a transgender lesbian of color with a disability and is neurodivergent.

Maybe such a person wasn’t available.

Coffin’s elevation comes as universities across the country are facing scrutiny for their response to the Oct. 7 attacks, which elicited tepid tut-tutting from administrators but fierce support from some students and faculty, who explicitly justified violence against civilians.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 31, 2023

Academia is such a sheltered world in which the priorities are set by a mob whose only allegiance is to the Narrative™, so I doubt they even thought twice about the message they were sending when they made this pick.

Perhaps Coffin will one day achieve the maturity to become a good lawyer, but it seems unlikely that much personal growth has occurred since last March. ‘

Everything is ideology these days, and much of the reason for that is the hiring process, which actively screens out anybody who isn’t down with the cause. The entire committee at Stanford is Leftist, and this is the case at most universities when they hire new people

All of its faculty members are quite far left, four current and former students said, with even liberals friendly to the Federalist Society left off the list.

The committee includes Pamela Karlan, who rose to stardom in 2019 over her impeachment testimony against Donald Trump.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) October 31, 2023

The result? Academia has moved from vital to the future of the nation, to useful for getting a good job, to mostly useless except if you are destined to reach the heights of power where being from the “best” schools still matters, and now to being an active disaster zone for the country’s future.

I fear the situation cannot be fixed, although the donor revolt taking place over the failure of academic institutions to stand against terrorism is a small start. Unfortunately, these universities can afford to lose some donors because they are so wealthy.

This makes administrators more frightened of their students and faculty than of their donors.

So far. That may change.

Turning off the spigot of government grants would be a bigger problem, as doing so would cut into operating budgets. The next Republican president should keep that in mind.

But for now, Left-wing activism is the best way up the ladder in the academic universe. So much the worse for the rest of us.