The Stanford Free Speech Incident with David Lat

The Long Game

Nobody has covered the Stanford free speech incident more closely than David Lat. He's a legal affairs writer at his Substack, Original Jurisdiction.

David is a Harvard undergrad and a Yale law school graduate who has a fascinating backstory. He was originally an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted federal crimes under former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who of course went on to become governor of New Jersey and ran for president in 2016.

We talk about the details of the Stanford free speech incident, and why David thinks the defense of free speech by Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez is such a significant milestone, and a potential turning point in the debate.

At the end we discuss whether the "heckler's veto" that Dean Martinez said made the Stanford students unprotected speech might also be a way of thinking about what Peter Pomerantsev has called "censorship by noise." That's the way that authoritarians and bad actors in free societies try to "flood the zone with shit," as Steve Bannon so memorably put it, to make it impossible for truth to be distinguished from falsehood.

You can read my summary of the Stanford incident at Yahoo News here.

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