Law Professor Ilya Shapiro Resigns from Georgetown Law After Leave Over Controversial Tweet, Blasts ‘Den of Vipers’
Conservative law professor Ilya Shapiro resigned from Georgetown Law on Monday, only days after being reinstated in his position. Shapiro was originally suspended in February over a tweet about Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court.
Shapiro said he decided to resign after reading the report into his tweets from the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action (IDEAA). According to Shapiro, he was cleared due to a “technicality,” which is he was not a full employee at the time he sent out his tweet. He said he was being set up for a “slow-motion firing.”
“Dean William Treanor cleared me on the technicality that I wasn’t an employee when I tweeted, but the IDEAA implicitly repealed Georgetown’s Speech and Expression Policy and set me up for discipline the next time I transgress progressive orthodoxy. Instead of participating in that slow-motion firing, I’m resigning,” Shapiro wrote in an oped for the Wall Street Journal.
Shapiro also tweeted out his resignation letter on Monday.
Here’s my resignation letter from @GeorgetownLaw, a place that doesn’t value free speech. In the name of DEI, it stifles intellectual diversity, undermines equal opportunity, and excludes dissenting voices. pic.twitter.com/KrAlfTEk7z
— Ilya Shapiro (@ishapiro) June 6, 2022
In Shapiro’s tweet, he suggested Jackson’s nomination was partly due to her being Black.
“Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart. Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?” he wrote at the time.
Shapiro quickly apologized, saying his tweet was “inartful.”
In his op-ed, Shapiro reprinted some of the report that pushed his resignation.
“The University’s anti-harassment policy does not require that a respondent intend to denigrate. Instead, the Policy requires consideration of the ‘purpose or effect’ of a respondent’s conduct,” it reads.
Shapiro wrote in response: “That people were offended, or claim to have been, is enough for me to have broken the rules.”
The professor said he was told any similar tweets that cause offense could very well get him fired, something he wrote was inevitable considering his conservative politics.
“It is the Georgetown administrators who have created a hostile work environment for me,” he wrote.
Shapiro further explained his decision in an interview with Fox News Digital where he called Georgetown Law a “den of vipers.”
“If my tweet hadn’t happened, something [else] would have happened through commentary on Supreme Court affirmative action in the fall, something,” he said. “It’s such a den of vipers.”
