More than 400 Yale Law School students – over 60% of the total student body – have signed an open letter slamming a recent free speech event as “disrespectful” to LGBTQ+ students, and urging less police presence on Yale campus.
The letter comes after a massive backlash to an event by the Federalist Society of Yale Law School (YLS) last month.
The Federalist Society describes itself as “committed to encouraging open and honest debate on the fundamental legal issues of our day,” arranging formal discussions between individuals with differing views on important legal matters.
Last month the society organised one such debate between Kristen Waggoner from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) – a religious advocacy group – and Monica Miller of the American Humanist Association – a liberal atheist group. The topic was to see if common ground could be found between Christians and atheists on the issue of free speech.
“It was pretty much the most innocuous thing you could talk about,” one Federalist Society member told the Washington Free Beacon.
However, the event elicited a massive backlash from almost 120 law students who arrived to protest the event inside the venue with signs and placards. Reportedly, they objected to the ADF’s traditional Christian views of LGBT issues.
Law professor Kate Stith, who was the event’s moderator, reportedly had to pause the event after one student allegedly told the religious speaker “I will literally fight you, bitch.”
Students reportedly resorted to clapping, stamping, chanting, singing and pounding on the wall to drown out the panel of speakers, and jeered after being told to “grow up” by the moderating professor.
“It was disturbing to witness law students whipped into a mindless frenzy,” the Christian speaker, Waggoner, told the Washington Free Beacon.
“I did not feel it was safe to get out of the room without security.”
Ultimately, police officers arrived to escort the speakers out of the room safely.
Now, over 60% of Yale Law School’s student body has signed a letter condemning the event and the subsequent police presence.
“We write as a coalition of queer students and allies deeply concerned with the presence of armed police at a peaceful protest of law students on campus,” the students wrote to the college’s Dean.
“We write today because, in addition to the deeply disrespectful presence of ADF on campus and the faculty moderator’s dismissal of our peaceful action as childish, armed police officers were called into the Sterling Law Building in response to our exercise of peaceful protest,” they went on.
“The safety of a large contingent of YLS students — a group of largely LGBTQ and BIPOC students — was put at risk, possibly by our own administration.”
They continued: “The danger of police violence in this country is intensified against Black LGBTQ people, and particularly Black trans people.
“Police-related trauma includes, but is certainly not limited to, physical harm. Even with all of the privilege afforded to us at YLS, the decision to allow police officers in as a response to the protest put YLS’s queer student body at risk of harm.”
Waggoner, speaking to the Yale Daily News, said: “Future lawyers should have the critical thinking skills, intellectual curiosity, humility, and maturity to engage with ideas and legal principles that they may disagree with.”