A left-wing Columbia Law School group sent an email to students and faculty on Friday objecting to a recent school-sponsored Federalist Society event featuring Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, claiming the event and the school’s resulting social-media post perpetuate “white supremacist, patriarchal violence.”
The National Lawyers Guild chapter at Columbia Law School condemned the Instragram post, which advertised Federalist Society members’ recent visit to Washington, D.C. for a scholarly conversation with Kavanaugh.
“They learned about the human side of being a justice, the Court’s deliberation process, and how to be an effective advocate,” the caption read. “Justice Kavanaugh also answered questions about a few of his most famous opinions.”
Multiple progressive student organizations decried the promotion of Kavanaugh, who they accused of being a sexual abuser. In response, some groups vowed to boycott some law school events in protest.
Through the visit to D.C. and the resulting Instagram post, CLS “places itself within a broader matrix of actors and behaviors that normalizes white supremacist, patriarchal violence in the law, legal education, and the everyday fabric of U.S. society,” the National Lawyers Guild wrote in a statement obtained by National Review. “FedSoc is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is patriarchy and the gender-based violence it facilitates.”
The student activists alleged that the law school is complicit in these injustices by giving Kavanaugh, as well as other “guest speakers” supposedly tied to racist and white supremacist groups, a platform.
CLS and the Federalist Society “disguise this violence under pretenses of apoliticism, objectivity, and neutrality,” the statement read.
In 2018, Kavanaugh was subject to a vicious, partisan confirmation process that wreaked havoc on his family and reputation. Democrats took Christine Blasey Ford’s uncorroborated 30-year-old allegation of sexual assault and treated it as though it were uncontested fact.
Student leaders from the National Lawyers Guild parroted the Democrats’ unsubstantiated conclusion that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Blasey Ford in their statement.
“It is patriarchy that elevates men like Brett Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court despite multiple survivors credibly speaking out against his history of sexual assault,” they wrote. “It is patriarchy that allows CLS to think it is acceptable to highlight and celebrate Kavanaugh as normal.”
Last June, there was an assassination attempt on Kavanaugh’s life that went largely unreported by the mainstream media. An armed California man, bringing with him a variety of weapons and tools, told police shortly after being detained that he intended to break into Kavanaugh’s house and kill him because he was upset about the leaked abortion opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
The Empowering Women of Color group similarly said it would skip future CLS recruiting events because of the law school’s post.
“We cannot condone complicity with a man who is credibly accused of sexual assault,” it said. “The insinuation from the Communications Office that the post was neutral and just the Law School’s way of highlighting activities students are participating in is laughable and untrue. A post of this kind, with its caption, is a terrifying stamp of approval.”