Once again, the privileged elites at one of America’s premier law schools have had a public meltdown. The latest target: widely respected federal judge Kyle Duncan, appointed by President Donald Trump to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018.

I am a Federalist Society chapter president at a reputable non-Ivy law school that actually equips students to be lawyers rather than outraged academics. But even schools with practical ambitions such as mine feel the cultural impact of these events at Stanford, Yale, and Harvard. When administrators fail to hold students accountable for bad-faith attacks on the free exchange of ideas at the highest level of our educational institutions, it threatens the principles of free speech everywhere.

Duncan attempted to give a talk at Stanford Law School this month titled “Covid, Guns, and Twitter” at the invitation of the Federalist Society, when he was shouted down by dozens of student protesters. Outside the lecture hall, posters displayed student-members of the Federalist Society with the slogan, “Meet the Federalist Society's 2022-2023 Board. You Should Be Ashamed.”

To his credit, Duncan continued to present while, for the better part of an hour, students yelled profanities, calling him a “scumbag” and “liar.” Eventually, DEI Assistant Dean Tirien Steinbach stepped in to deliver a six-minute, seemingly pre-written diatribe in which she told Judge Duncan that she “absolutely believe(s) in free speech” and that he is “welcome in this space,” only to accuse him of allegedly perpetrating harm through his rulings and informing him that he is hurting the Stanford community.

She repeatedly asked, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” What does this mean, you may wonder? Steinbach clarified that she wanted Duncan to explain whether his talk is worth the emotional turmoil it seems to cause some Stanford law students.

If the “juice” is exposing law students to opinions with which they disagree, then it is well worth the squeeze.

Free speech-related outbursts at elite law schools have become far too common. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has rightly described the state of law school free speech as “abysmal,” and some federal judges are refusing to hire clerks from what were once considered the nation’s top law schools, citing pervasive “ cancel culture. ”

It is tempting to treat these events as pure spectacle — opportunities for momentary shock value or comic relief brought to us by the elites of American academics. But we must start recognizing these incidents as the serious threat they are. Whether deserved or not, degrees from these institutions provide students with powerful credentials and open doors to positions of power both in the legal world and in broader society. By allowing ideology and wokeism to defeat open discussion and reasoned debate at the highest levels of academia, we are permitting illiberalism to trickle down to every level of society.

Many Ivy League law students will enter into fields where the effects of their illiberalism will go unpunished. These students are our future academics , senators, and law clerks . Seventy-seven percent of law school professors attended a top 14 law school, and 33% attended Harvard or Yale.

For students at other law schools in the country, who leave legal education and become practitioners, the normalization of intolerance to opposing arguments will leave them without the key tools of legal practice. While this is a shame for a generation of lawyers who will enter the profession ill-equipped to do their jobs, it has broader implications for our democracy and rule of law.

A few days after the event, Stanford issued a formal apology to Duncan, claiming the incident was “inconsistent with our policies on free speech.” But until schools such as Stanford actually enforce these policies, which means holding to account those who violate them, this behavior will continue and soon spread to every corner of the legal profession.

Jillian Jacobson is a student at Boston Law School and the president of the school's Federalist Society chapter.