Persuasion talks about events at Stanford earlier this month, when a speech by a federal appeals judge was heckled to a stop by angry students: A Shoutdown at Stanford – Persuasion

I share it here because the dean of the Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, wrote a spectacularly good response to the incident. It’s an excellent read, and I found the following moving:

There is temptation to a system in which people holding views perceived by some as harmful or offensive are not allowed to speak, to avoid giving legitimacy to their views or upsetting members of the community, but history teaches us that this is a temptation to be avoided. I can think of no circumstance in which giving those in authority the right to decide what is and is not acceptable content for speech has ended well. Indeed, the power to suppress speech is often very quickly directed towards suppressing the views of marginalized groups. We see this today, both around the United States and around the globe. And at key moments in history, robust protection for the rights of association and speech has been critical to the advance of social movements for historically marginalized groups…Thus, I believe that strong protection for freedom of speech is a bedrock principle that ultimately supports diversity, equity, and inclusion and that we must do everything in our power to ensure that it endures.

(emphasis mine)