Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently claimed that certain law schools and colleges were completely “off limits” for him and other conservatives to visit.
“You know, I have never been to Stanford Law School,” Thomas told Peter Robinson during an on-stage discussion hosted by the Hoover Institute.
He went on to say that current conservative thought leaders, like himself, are largely unwelcome from high education institutions like Stanford Law School.
“That’s the reality,” Thomas said. “That’s the world we’re in, because there’s certain places that are just presumptively off limits. This is the way it works. And that’s true. I mean, I’ve been to Yale Law School, but that’s the way it works. And to say it isn’t, is to lie.”
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The comments from the high court justice came amid ongoing criticism from conservative pundits that college campuses have become intolerant to right-wing ideas and that students are being indoctrinated by liberal professors.
Thomas alleged that, if not for YouTube, the ideas and works of American economist Thomas Sowell, who profoundly shaped his political views, would be lost to the younger generation of students because some people’s views are “unpalatable” to the student body.
“And so what these kids are getting is all that stuff [that] is not there,” Thomas said, referring to colleges. “It’s just on YouTube. It’s available to everybody, and they get to make up their own mind.”
A Stanford spokesperson rejected Thomas’ notion that the law school was “off-limits” for him to visit.
“We would be honored to host Justice Thomas at Stanford Law School,” a spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The Stanford Constitutional Law Center, directed by Professor Michael McConnell, former Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, regularly hosts members of the judiciary on campus.”
“Our students and faculty would welcome the opportunity to hear from Justice Thomas and engage with his perspectives on the Court, the Constitution, and the law,” the spokesperson continued.
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But in the past couple of years, there have been multiple incidents in which a conservative speaker’s visit to the school was disrupted by student protesters.
When Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, visited in 2023 to give a presentation titled “Covid, Guns, and Twitter,” he was met with fierce backlash from students affiliated with LGBTQ groups because of his judicial record. The student groups — OutLaw and Identity and Rights Affirmers for Trans Equality (IRATE) — repeatedly pressured the hosting organization, Federalist Society, to cancel the event or move it to Zoom.
When that failed, a group of 90 law students appeared with signs and bullhorns to protest Duncan’s talk, causing major disruptions that made it impossible for Duncan to complete his presentation. Duncan requested assistance and DEI administrator Tirien Steinbach took the podium acknowledging his free speech rights, but siding with the student protesters.
“For many people here, your work has caused harm,” Steinbach said to Duncan. “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”
The incident led Stanford dean Jenny Martinez and president Marc Tessier-Lavigne to issue an apology to Duncan. The school required students to participate in mandatory training and subsequently made the school’s position unusually explicit: protesting Duncan was protected, but preventing an invited speaker from effectively delivering a presentation violated Stanford’s disruption policy.
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Three years earlier, when then-Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins visited the law school to host a discussion, twelve student organizations organized a walkout. The groups took issue with Hawkins’ role in litigation to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status.
Just five minutes into Hawkins’ address, more than three-quarters of the audience left.
Thomas did not point to either incident during his remarks at the Hoover Institution, nor did he say whether he had ever been invited to speak at Stanford. He did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Still, Thomas suggested that the ideological divide he sees within higher education has made engagement between conservatives and some of the nation’s most prominent academic institutions increasingly difficult.
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