Twitter CEO Elon Musk stated that students at ‘elite’ universities are being subjected to a “Soviet level of indoctrination,” in a reaction to a news article about Stanford University students targeting the law school’s dean and other students who think differently from them.
“Parents don’t realize the Soviet level of indoctrination that their children are receiving in elite high schools & colleges!” Musk wrote in response to a Twitter post linking to a Washington Free Beacon article about a bizarre protest in which students lined a hall with posters and stared at law school dean Jenny Martinez directly following her regularly-held lecture on constitutional law.
Parents don’t realize the Soviet level of indoctrination that their children are receiving in elite high schools & colleges! https://t.co/xhpmNanp6b
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2023
“We, the students in your constitutional law class, are sorry for exercising our 1st Amendment rights,” read some of the hung fliers.
This display took place after Martinez had apologized to conservative federal Judge Kyle Duncan, who had his event derailed by Stanford students and consequently shut down.
Joining the students in the event disruption was Stanford’s associate dean of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ Tirien Steinbach, who reportedly called Duncan “abhorrent” and “harmful.”
Along with Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne Duncan, Martinez sent out a formal apology to Duncan for the inconvenience.
The letter clearly took a slight at Steinbach, reading, “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and
instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”
Fox News host Trace Gallagher noted that alleged leftist law students who were protesting Judge Duncan made no efforts to put forward evidence or reasoning as to how his court rulings were incorrect.
It’s not just Professors who are making students fear sharing their views in class, but at @stanford law, students attempted to silence Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan with their continuous heckling. What have our greatest universities turned into? pic.twitter.com/YiRjaPASkX
— Trace Gallagher (@tracegallagher) March 16, 2023
According to the Free Beacon, two students claimed that the vast majority of Martinez’s class joined in on the protest out of fear of potential repercussions should they not take part.
“They gave us weird looks if we didn’t wear black” and joined the crowd, explained Luke Schumacher, a first-year law student in Martinez’s class who refused to take part in the protest. “It didn’t feel like the inclusive, belonging atmosphere that the DEI office claims to be creating.”