Following the spectacle at Stanford, Vincent Phillip Muñoz, the director of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, invited Duncan to deliver a lecture in response to the protests. So, on Friday, March 24, Duncan visited the Golden Dome to give a speech titled “Free Speech and Legal Education in Our Liberal Democracy.”

In his talk, Duncan did not dwell on the details of the March 9 protests. “Suffice it to say, it was a disgrace,” he remarked. Instead, he set about to reflect on the broader implications of the events, which, having transpired at one of the country’s most elite law schools, offer a snapshot of our current zeitgeist.

“Make no mistake, he said, “What happened in that classroom on March 9 had nothing to do with our great American tradition of free speech. It was, rather, a parody of it.”