American law schools used to be rather stodgy places where students would learn about the pillars of our legal system. That began to change about 50 years ago, when leftists discovered that they could smuggle their ideology in and get away with it. Slowly at first, legal education changed to the point where activism for “progressive” causes is now front and center and students are more likely to hear why our legal system should be torn down than to learn its workings.

One person who has first-hand experience with that is Ilya Shapiro, who has written an illuminating book about the deplorable state of legal education. I review it today for the Martin Center.

The book is chock-full of stories about the way law schools have become cogs in the leftist machine. In his own case, he faced an “investigation” by Georgetown Law School over a mere tweet in which he said that Biden should not have declared that he would consider only a black woman for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. For that, he was called “racist” by student groups. After months in limbo, the law school’s dean informed Shapiro that he could keep his job (which he’d barely begun) but that if any of his writings or statements caused trouble, he’d again be in hot water. Unwilling to work under those conditions, Shapiro quit.

Law schools have empowered activist students. Whatever they say offends them is grounds for punishing faculty members who say the “wrong” things. And students often exercise the heckler’s veto over people whose opinions they dislike. Rather than teaching future lawyers that they need to carefully analyze the statements of opponents and respond with reasoned arguments, law schools indulge students who act like petulant children.

Shapiro argues that the nation’s future is at stake. Our law schools must be restored to teaching institutions, not training grounds for radicals.

Whatever good faith the diversity-industrial complex brings to bear, it ends up bludgeoning people into mouthing platitudes they don’t believe and excluding them if they resist. It is at the root of the illiberal takeover of legal education, so we must excise it root and branch from our institutions.

Indeed we must.