Ilya Shapiro On Why He Resigned From Georgetown Law Following Investigation Into Controversial Tweet: ‘They Had Set Me Up To Fail’

Listen To The Full Interview Below:

Ilya Shapiro, former executive director of Georgetown Law’s Center for the Constitution joined the Guy Benson Show

Shapiro laid out the reasoning behind his resignation despite being reinstated by saying,

“I’ll give you the TikTok, Guy. I met with the dean at 1 o’clock, 1:00 P.M. Eastern on Thursday, now the meeting lasted however long it lasted, I’m reinstated, great. I start — you know, I tweet the news. I start writing an op-ed for “The Wall Street Journal”. Sometime that afternoon the report of the IDEA, the — what is it — Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action office hits my inbox. I didn’t get to read that until — I don’t know — I don’t know if I read it that night or started reading it the next day. But quickly brought in my counsel and my wife, who’s a better lawyer than all of us, and a couple of other trusted advisors. And we came to the conclusion over the weekend that this was just not tenable, that they had set me up to fail. What they did, rather than vindicating me in any way was to effectively say that, had I been an employee, the tweet was a firing offense…… And establishing the standard that, regardless of what the expression and speech policy says, which says that, you know, some speech can be offensive and that’s protected which is — which is fine. Their actual policy on paper, on pixels is perfectly good. But this IDEAA report said that the next time that I say something or write something that offends somebody, that is — that crates a hostile educational environment.”

Shapiro commented on if he is looking to take legal action against the University over the ordeal saying,

“I can’t really comment on the legal options. Anything’s possible, but I can’t comment beyond that.”

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
GUY BENSON, FOX RADIO HOST: — at Georgetown Law over recent months and your suspension, pending this investigation, into a tweet. So, for people who might not know the whole story, if you could just condense for us the basics from the tweet itself, to the investigation, to the conclusion late last week and now subsequently — we’ll get into your resignation in a moment.

ILYA SHAPIRO, FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGETOWN LAW’S CENTER FOR THE CONSTITUTION: Back in January, the day that Justice Breyers retirement leaked, I was in Austin, Texas traveling. And I had done some media during the day, I put out some statements. That evening returning to my hotel room after a friend’s celebratory dinner, I was doomscrolling — bad idea — late at night, right before going to bed — bad idea. And got upset about, you know, thinking about these things. I’m a Supreme Court expert. I’m thinking about analyzing the nominees. Just really was not happy with President Biden limiting his selection pool by race and sex. And so, I tweeted out that upset, and that was not taken well by the Twitter mob overnight. My political enemies went for my head, and off we went. I had about four days of hell. Eventually, the dean of Georgetown onboarded me. I was due to start work February 1st. So I was onboarded and immediately placed on paid administrative leave, pending investigation into whether my tweet violated the university’s various policies. That took four months. So it went from four days of hell to four months of purgatory until last Thursday I was reinstated. Why? Because of their vaunted free speech policy? No. But because somebody finally looked at a calendar and determined that I had not been an employee when I tweeted, and so not subject to discipline. But (ph) —

BENSON: OK.

SHAPIRO: — it turns out later, as I found out, that the terms — the report from the diversity officers who investigated me made my tenure untenable, that we’ll get into. And I resigned yesterday.

BENSON: OK. So I remember seeing the tweet and the whole hullabaloo over the tweet. You’ve said it was inartful. I think that maybe you’re beating yourself up a little bit too much. You were expressing maybe not exactly how you would like to, given a second opportunity. But you were expressing a disappointment that we express here on this show, that many Americans share. In fact, according to some of the polling, a large majority of Americans agreed with you that a president coming out and say, we are going to at the outset only limit our search for a Supreme Court nominee to an individual that checks a sex and race box, everyone else need not apply. I know he had promised it on the campaign trial, I get all that. But you felt like that was not a good way to go about this. You also offered someone that you thought would be the best nominee, a different person of color. But because you tweeted — the way that you tweeted and the substance of it, as you said, there was this big drama and a lot of outrage. I think much of it was fake, that’s how this often goes with the mob, a bunch of fake outrage. The point is to punish you and to claim a scalp. And for four months, as you say, they investigated this tweet. Let’s pause there for a moment. What was that purgatory, to use your word, like for you professionally, for your family? That must have been an unpleasant experience.

SHAPIRO: Yes, to say the least. Especially the initial parts when it was still recovering from the hell of the first four days where I thought I had blown up my life, blown up my career. How was I going to provide for my family? I was transitioning from Cato to Georgetown. The purgatory initially was uncomfortable. Then, sort of, as one would expect purgatory to be, it was kind of a roller coaster of emotions. And I got a lot of support, I’m very gratified. I think you reached out to me very early on. A lot of friends and allies in either personal expressions of support, public statements condemning Georgetown, private back channels to the dean, I’m very grateful for — for all of that. And I kept writing and speaking, especially as this time went on and —

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: By the way, can I just ask you, in — in that flood of support, because you had all the negative people out there trying to come for you, did you hear from anyone inside Georgetown who was upset by the way the university was treating you?

SHAPIRO: So the Georgetown Law Faculty, about 150 people — I think there are 3.5 non-progressives. They certainly all supported me. But nobody else really — some students — you know there was a counter-letter, the one that got all the attention was the 1,000 signatures on the Black Law Students Association letter. But there was a counter-letter by the Conservative and Libertarian Students Association. And they were all supportive aghast that they might lose the opportunity to study with me and be involved in — in my programs. But no other — no other faculty member certainly — well, I guess I could mention David Cole, who’s also the legal director of the ACLU. And it’s remarkable that he did this because the ACLU has gotten to be just another left-wing organization, not a free speech or civil liberties group. But David Cole said what I did was heinous, but I shouldn’t be fired for it because it was speech. So, there was that.

BENSON: Yes. Heinous, a very strong word here given what you were actually expressing but so this thing goes on, it drags for months and ultimately, as you said, late last week they determined that based on this technicality of your start date, the tweet had proceeded your time at Georgetown. And therefore, the whole issue was kind of moot, and you could come and start your job. I’m trying to figure out how that determination could not have been made five minutes into the investigation, as opposed to four months.

SHAPIRO: And without spending, I’m sure, hundreds of thousands if not more than $1 million at WilmerHale, the — you know, one of the largest most expensive law firms in the country that they hired to help with the investigation — not even conduct the investigation. That was led by the H.R. and diversity bureaucrats, but to advise the university. So yes, I mean clearly there was a lot of pretext and political reasons going on behind the scenes. They waited until the end of the semester students were off campus —

BENSON: Well, and there also like a bunch of threats, right. When they reinstated you, you had people saying this is outrageous, this is harmful. This is violence, we now need a commission and the university to decide what is conservative speech and what is overt racism. I mean all the normal — sadly, now normal things that we’ve grown accustomed to. When you were reinstated, even on the technicality, you wrote an op-ed sort of celebrating the win and saying that you were looking forward to getting to Georgetown Law and rolling up your sleeves and getting to work. And then just days later, you pulled a 180 and resigned sort of in this blaze of glory in a very scathing letter to the dean.What material had changed between — I guess, in your mindset between the time that you wrote this kind of consolatory, I’m ready to get back to work here op-ed versus the, you know what, never mind, this is irreparable resignation?

SHAPIRO: I’ll give you the — I’ll give you the TikTok (ph), Guy. I met with the dean at 1 o’clock, 1:00 P.M. Eastern on Thursday, now the meeting lasted however long it lasted, I’m reinstated, great. I start — you know, I tweet the news. I start writing an op-ed for “The Wall Street Journal”. Sometime that afternoon the report of the IDEA (ph), the — what is it — Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action office hits my inbox. I didn’t get to read that until — I don’t know — I don’t know if I read it that night or started reading it the next day. But quickly brought in my counsel and my wife, who’s a better lawyer than all of us, and a couple of other trusted advisors. And we came to the conclusion over the weekend that this was just not tenable, that they had set me up to fail. What they did, rather than vindicating me in any way was to effectively say that, had I been an employee, the tweet was a firing offense. And —

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: And they called it objectively offensive and harmful. And I think neither of those things is objectively true, but they are just stating it as fact. I think that’s disturbing unto itself.

SHAPIRO: And establishing the standard that, regardless of what the expression and speech policy says, which says that, you know, some speech can be offensive and that’s protected which is — which is fine. Their actual policy on paper, on pixels is perfectly good. But this IDEAA report said that the next time that I say something or write something that offends somebody, that is — that crates a hostile educational environment. And —

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: And so, you’ve actually —

(CROSSTALK)

SHAPIRO: — I can’t work under those conditions.

BENSON: Yes, you’ve laid out a few examples. Like hypothetically, if you cheered the invalidation of Roe versus Wade by the Supreme Court if that happens as expected, could that be a triggering event for another investigation into you in a hostile environment where they’re going to put you through another show trial, right. That’s one example. You know, religious liberty cases, gun cases, affirmative action cases, you weighing-in as your authentic conservative Libertarian self, they’ve already basically stated that those types of expressions will at least throw you back into this type of uncertainty with a bunch of people braying for your head every time it happens. They’ve already lost one round of the battle; they want to win the war. Under those circumstances, the dean might have told you, and you said he did, that they would have your back. But then, the actual document they sent you suggested that might not be the case. In fact, likely would not be the case.

SHAPIRO: That’s exactly right. It’s saying — in First Amendment jurisprudence this is what’s known as a heckler’s veto. So the hecklers, the opponents who don’t like the speech, get to — get to throttle it or punish it. And there was no way out. I was neither prepared to walk on eggshells for the rest of my time at Georgetown in the hopes that I don’t inadvertently offend someone —

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: Impossible, by the way.

SHAPIRO: Right.

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: Impossible.

SHAPIRO: Right. Right. Right — or subject myself to this other shoe dropping and getting back into the Star Chamber.

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: And it would happen over and over, that’s the other thing. They wouldn’t wait for one thing. They would wait for the next thing. And if that didn’t work, they’d wait for the next thing, and on and on it would go. And the institution had clearly, I think, demonstrated that ultimately, they are afraid of these students and would not come to your defense. Unlike their defense of other members of the faculty who have said and tweeted I’d say much more objectively objectionable things. And you’ve given a few examples of that. Now, you hasten to add that you were not calling for any of these former colleagues of yours to be sanctioned, or to be punished, or fired or get in trouble. But just give us a taste of some of the other speech that was defended by Georgetown as free speech while they were scrutinizing this one little tweet of yours.

SHAPIRO: Yes. Here’s — from my letter, these are actual tweets by actual Georgetown professors. During the Kavanaugh confirmation process Professor Carol Christine Fair, who’s actually become one of my big defenders on free speech, she tweeted, “Look of this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.” And so, Georgetown did not initiate an investigation, but instead invoked their free expression policy.

BENSON: Well, let’s just pause there for a second. You tweeted that you had a problem with Joe Biden saying that he would only consider a black woman for the Supreme Court. She urged the murder of politicians to be publicly executed and then their dead bodies castrated while she and others, you know, cheered and laughed. And that was just sort of like, oh, well, maybe a little unseemly, but there was no institutional action taken against her. And not even an investigation, yes?

SHAPIRO: That’s correct.

BENSON: Amazing. That’s just absolutely amazing. And I’m not saying that she should, you know, face any sort of sanction. I also am not sure I’d want my kid taking a law class from that individual. But I think the illustration here is absolutely shocking. I can’t even call it double standards. There just seem to be no standards based entirely on whether you’re deemed to be a good person on the team on not, and that’s embarrassing. The hypocrisy itself there is embarrassing.

SHAPIRO: Here’s another example —

BENSON: Sure.

SHAPIRO: — Guy, which is not as — kind of outrageous, demanding murder and castration, but perhaps more legally problematic. So, in April of this year, well after my own Tweet, Professor Heidi Feldman, in my letter I write it as Feldblum, unfortunately. I made a typographical error. I don’t know whether the Feldman, Feldblum mix-up makes an antisemite in somebody’s views. But anyway, Professor Feldman tweeted, “We have only one political party in this country, the Democrats. The other group is a combination of a cult and an insurrection-supporting crime syndicate. The only ethically and politically responsible stance to take toward the Republican,” quote, “‘party’ is to consistently point out that it’s no longer a legitimate participant in U.S. constitutional democracy.” Now, in D.C., where Georgetown is, political affiliation is a protected category no less than race or sex or all the ones that we’re used to. So this, you know, potentially is not just, you know, outrageous in terms of castration and murder and whatever inflammatory, but this actually goes against D.C. code —

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: In terms of, you know, in terms of running afoul of the laws in D.C. when it comes to, for example, Republican students of hers that you’re saying she’s calling them criminals and, you know, insurrectionists who cannot be considered part of a legitimate party. She teaches, as you note, in your resignation letter, she teaches first-year law students mandatory courses. So — and no action was taken against her, I’m not saying it should have, but you juxtaposed that with how they treated you. You ultimately conclude, “I won’t live this way. I’m resigning.” Last two questions quickly here, Ilya. Number one, you reference a hostile work environment in this resignation letter. That’s sort of a buzzword. Are you considering any legal options against Georgetown, number one? And number two, what’s next for you?

SHAPIRO: I can’t really comment on the legal options. Anything’s possible. But I can’t comment beyond that.

BENSON: OK.

SHAPIRO: On what’s next, tune into your colleague Tucker Carlson tonight. I do have some plans, they’re good. They’ll enable me to stay in the arena and be even more effective in advancing these ideas. I think that many, or most of them, that you and I share, and making sure that the constitutional values of our great republic are preserved and expanded.

BENSON: Now there we go, interesting. So Ilya Shapiro, my guest here, former Executive Director — underlining former — of Georgetown Law’s Center for the Constitution. And we know each other a little bit socially and professionally. I’m sorry that you had to go through all this, I think Georgetown has covered itself in inglory (ph) here. I think it’s really embarrassing for the institution. I hope that they learn a good lesson out of this — I’m not sure that they will, but I hope that they do.And we’ll be watching tonight, Tucker 8:00 P.M Eastern FOX News Channel for that announcement that, I guess, is coming from Ilya. We appreciate it, Ilya. And we’ll be watching. Thank you.

SHAPIRO: Thank you, Guy.