Tennessee Governor Bill Lee joined lawmakers at the state and federal level, as well as other prominent figures, in signing a letter asking Yale Law School to discipline a “vitriolic mob” that derailed a bipartisan panel on free speech at the campus in March.
The letter urges Yale Law School to punish the “physical intimidation and menacing behavior” directed at the speakers, who were escorted out of the event by police due to the mob. The letter also calls on the law school to “condemn the behavior of students who violated other people’s rights” and “take appropriate disciplinary actions in keeping with Yale’s free speech policies.”
“Instead of engaging with the panelists, a shocking number of Yale Law students hurled constant insults and obscenities at them and tried to prevent them from speaking and being heard,” the letter reads. “Our nation desperately needs the next generation of attorneys, legislators, judges, and Supreme Court justices to be marked by the character and values that undergird the American legal profession and a free society.”
“I signed a letter to Yale Law School urging administrators to address a student mob that violently disrupted a bipartisan event about free speech and political discourse,” Governor Lee said in a statement. “The behavior is shameful but it speaks to a growing trend in higher-education where First Amendment freedom is taken for granted and often held in contempt.”
In addition to signing the letter to combat the issue, Governor Lee mentions in his statement that a bill establishing the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee (HB2157/SB2410), continues to work through the legislature with broad, bipartisan support.
“We are endeavoring to establish the University of Tennessee Institute for American Civics to be the antidote to the cynical, un-American behavior we are seeing at far too many universities,” Governor Lee further expressed in his statement. “The Institute for American Civics will be a flagship for the nation – a beacon celebrating intellectual diversity at our universities and teaching how responsible, civic-minded people strengthen our country and our communities. Representatives from Alliance Defending Freedom and the American Humanist Association, who had such a terrible experience at Yale, are invited to join us in Tennessee anytime.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
