The Curious Case of Ilya Shapiro
It’s been a memorable spring for Ilya Shapiro.
Mr. Shapiro, a longtime legal scholar and VP at the Cato Institute, was hired by Georgetown University Law Center at the beginning of 2022. In February he would join his well-known colleague Randy Barnett at the school’s Center for the Constitution, and teach elective courses presumably in the area of constitutional jurisprudence.
But on January 27th, Shapiro found himself immersed in scalding hot water and potentially out of a job. His infraction took the form of a tweet concerning the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court:
A twitter furor ensued, accusing Shapiro of everything from rank racism to white supremacy to the worst misogyny and sexism. Intersectionality, we might say, had a field day.
The Dean of Georgetown Law, one William Treanor, responded in the most predictable way imaginable and promptly placed Shapiro on “administrative leave– taking pains to point out that Shapiro was not yet an employee when the offending tweet issued.
In Shapiro’s strong defense, he neither said nor intended anything racist. By any reasonable good faith interpretation, he intend to convey his opinion that Sri Srinivasan was both more qualified for the Supreme Court and would be a better jurist than Brown Jackson. This does not imply Brown Jackson was “lesser” because she is a black woman, or that black women generally would be lesser jurists. And let us not forget it was Joe Biden ‘s insistence on viewing potential nominees only through an atavistic racial lens that prompted Shapiro’s tweet in the first place. So this rush to attack Shapiro and have him summarily fired simply show the demented political culture of America today, where career cancellations are every
Article from Mises Wire
