When Columbia Law School students graduate in cyberspace today at 1 p.m., they’ll hear Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden deliver the commencement address.
Though Biden stands credibly accused of sexually assaulting a former staff member in 1993, Dean Gillian Lester says he’s a fine example of a public leader and servant. And Columbia law professors who spoke with Fox News apparently agree.
Dozens said quite the opposite when they signed a letter in 2018 to say U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t fit to serve on the high court because his reaction to false charges of sexual assault was inappropriate for a judge. Law students protested Kavanaugh’s nomination at a sit-in.
Fox Questions Argumentative
Despite the allegations from Tara Reade, who says Biden cornered and molested her, Lester thinks Biden is a stellar public official, Fox noted.
“Vice President Joe Biden is synonymous with public service,” Lester said. “His enduring and exemplary career as a leader, lawyer, and public servant sets an example for our students as they prepare to begin their own course as legal professionals.”
And so Fox asked the obvious question of faculty members. Why not oppose Biden’s speech, particularly given Reade’s allegation and the law school faculty’s opposition to Kavanaugh’s elevation of the Supreme Court?
In one-on-one interviews … several Columbia Law School faculty members made clear the topic was a sensitive one — and that they had no intention of criticizing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Avery W. Katz, formerly a vice dean at the law school whom Columbia currently bills as a “Professor of Organizational Character,” lashed out when Fox News pointed out that he signed the open letter in the Times calling for Kavanaugh’s nomination to be pulled in 2018 amid sexual assault allegations. Asked whether he would object to Biden’s appearance at the university, Katz responded that the question “didn’t sound like a genuine inquiry” and seemed “argumentative.”
Katz then separately emailed two senior Fox News executives to complain that the request for comment he received, as well as one clarifying email, amounted to “multiple trolling messages … under the pretext of a journalistic inquiry.”
Katz added that he would block Fox News from contacting him: “I’m going to add [Fox News] to my spam filter after sending this message.”
Others such as Jeffrey Fagan told Fox that their “opposition to Kavanaugh was based on his temperament,” not the evidence-free allegations from Christine Blasey Ford.
Amusingly, another faculty member, Jeffrey Gordon, told Fox that he didn’t believe Reade, which means he thinks she’s lying, and anyway, like Fagan, he opposed Kavanaugh on the grounds of temperament:
“My opposition to Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation was not based on the allegations by Dr. Ford, per se,” Gordon began, “but rather on: (1) the lack of judicial temperament appropriate for a Supreme Court Justice as revealed by (i) his arrogant, self-pitying, partisan, and disrespectful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and (ii) his history as a partisan warrier [sic] in the Special Counsel investigation of Pres Clinton and in the Bush White House, and (2) my belief that his ideological commitments were outside the judicial mainstream.”
Others said likewise.
Biden’s Lies and Temperament
If true, then the law professors should have looked at Biden’s temperament as well as his inability to tell the truth.
• In March, when an autoworker asked Biden about gun control and seizing semi-automatic rifles, Biden exploded in rage, put his finger in the man’s face, told him he was “full of sh*t,” and threatened to slap him.
• In December, he called a farmer who asked an unfriendly question “a damn liar,” then said he was running for president because “I know more than most people know.”
• Even if Reade’s allegation is false, Biden’s well-known “temperament” around women leaves something to be desired, as multiple accusations of unwanted hugs and kisses and fetishistic hair sniffing well show.
• During the Kavanaugh hearings, Anita Hill surfaced, and #MeToo activists tried to resell her 11th-hour false harassment accusations during U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation to prove that such accusations are summarily dismissed. Then-Senator Biden, who presided over those hearings as Judiciary Commitee chairman, rewrote his own history: “I believed her from the beginning,” he said with the suggestion that Hill did not receive a fair hearing, another false claim from the #MeToo activists. But Biden did not believe Hill, as the late Senator Arlen Specter reported in his autobiography. Biden’s committee listened to Hill’s claims at length and investigated them thoroughly.
• Biden is a notorious plagiarist.
Image: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
