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Georgetown Law is facing accusations of hypocrisy after suspending a professor who tweeted about President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee but did nothing to various other professors using Twitter to push extreme language.
Ilya Shapiro, a recent Georgetown Law hire, is now on administrative leave, due to offending the sensibilities of academia and the Twitterverse by daring to suggest that maybe Biden’s best choice for the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) might be someone other than a black woman.
The name he threw out was Sri Srinivasan, whom he touted as a bona fide progressive. However, Shapiro’s choice of words, that Biden would pick a “lesser” black woman, triggered outrage.
“Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog [sic] & v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?” Shapiro tweeted (it has since been deleted).
This sparked a firestorm on Twitter, with liberals howling for his head:
“Lesser black woman” is going to end up being one of the kinder racist and sexist insults we see as this nomination process unfolds.
We are about to get a masterclass in misogynoir, and we should call that shit out every chance we get.
— Hakeem Jefferson (@hakeemjefferson) January 27, 2022
If a person is completely comfortable using the phrase “lesser black woman” in public to denounce the appointment of a (nonspecific) black woman to the Supreme Court, one can only imagine the level of breathtaking racism such a person spews in private.
— Chidike Okeem (@VOICEOFCHID) February 3, 2022
Shapiro did have his defenders though, and Shapiro himself was apologetic:
I apologize. I meant no offense, but it was an inartful tweet. I have taken it down. https://t.co/3d39BuCt3p
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) January 27, 2022
At CATO he directed the Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and the center made hundreds of legal filings. Consistently you see Ilya and his team standing for marginalized individuals and communities facing the full weight of an unjust state. /2 https://t.co/h9EEyvDkG9
— David French (@DavidAFrench) January 29, 2022
“Ilya’s presumption that any Black woman nominated by Biden is ‘lesser.'”
No one defending Ilya believes he harbors presumptions RE racial inferiority. His *offending* tweet identifies an “objectively best pick.” If a single person is objectively best, any other pick is *lesser* https://t.co/bnR2y346Fs
— Kmele 🖐 (@kmele) February 1, 2022
It was also pointed out, in Daily Mail among others, that Georgetown Law has been tolerant of more liberal faculty using extreme language. One example given was when the university did nothing to professor Heidi Li Feldman when she told her students they should not clerk for any Trump-appointed judges, and that professors should refuse to support any applications from their students to work for said judges.
In another, even more extreme example, professor Christine Fair said that supporters of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation “deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps,” and that afterward people should “castrate their corpses and feed them to swine.”
Fair’s Twitter account was suspended – but Georgetown did nothing to discipline her.
Shapiro’s hearing has yet to happen, so he isn’t actually fired just yet. Shapiro expressed confidence that he would be fully vindicated, and an open letter, signed by more than 170 members of the faculty, has been written to Dean Treanor.
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