On Decency and Double Standards at Georgetown
Shapiro is a Soviet emigré and highly regarded scholar who, until last week, seemed like a perfect match for the job as executive director at the Georgetown Center of the Constitution. He was scheduled to start February 1. But late at night, on January 26, he took to Twitter to express his disapproval of President Biden s pledge to appoint only a black woman to fill Justice Breyer s seat on the Supreme Court. Now, his career is on the line.
Here s what Shapiro wrote:
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 the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?
Because Biden said he’s only consider[ing] black women for SCOTUS, his nominee will always have an asterisk attached. Fitting that the Court takes up affirmative action next term.
Many others wrote similar tweets the same day, expressing outrage at the president s promise to reserve the seat for someone of a specific race and gender. Andrew Sullivan, for example, put the objection this way: The replacement will be chosen only after the field is radically winnowed by open race and sex discrimination, which have gone from being illegal to being celebrated and practiced by a president of the United States.
But instead of expressing disappointment that the president had made clear that his priority would be to choose a black woman not the best candidate, whatever that person s race or sex Shapiro s inartful phrasing indicated that the president s pledge would hand us a lesser black woman.
Led by a Slate journalist, the Twitter mob did what Twitter mobs do and stoked the intended result: In an email to the school the dean called Shapiro s tweets appalling and at odds with everything we stand for at Georgetown Law.
Then Shapiro, who had already deleted the tweet, sent an apology addressed to the Dean William Treanor and the entire Georgetown community:
I sincerely and deeply apologize for some poorly drafted tweets I posted late Wednesday night, he wrote.
Issues of race are of course quite sensitive, and debates over affirmative action are always fraught. My intent was to convey my opinion that excluding potential Supreme Court candidates . . . simply because of their race or gender, was wrong and harmful to the long term reputation of the Court. It was not to cast aspersions on the qualifications of a whole group of people, let alone question their worth as human beings. A person s dignity and worth simply do not, and should not, depend on any immutable characteristic. Those who know me know that I am sincere about these sentiments, and I would be more than happy to meet with any of you who have doubts about the quality of my heart.
But apologies and contrition are no longer enough, it seems. On Friday, the Black Law Students Association, speaking on behalf of a dozen student groups, wrote to insist that the school rescind Shapiro s job offer among many other demands. That s because these days, sincere apologies do not function as expressions of regret but as confessions of guilt.
It’s not difficult to see what the right thing to do is here. It’s only difficult to do it. How refreshing it would be to have a dean at a major law school that just did the right thing instead of wiggling about until finally doing the craven thing. That can’t be a good sign of where we are going.