The Patriot Post® · Leftist Mob Cancels Justice Thomas

Most law school students would consider the opportunity to learn from a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice a tremendous honor and a significant boon to their university. Apparently, though, law school students at George Washington University aren’t like most, since they effectively chased Justice Clarence Thomas out of the annual teaching gig he’s been doing at the school since 2011.

Last month, those GWU students petitioned the school, demanding that Thomas be removed from a seminar course he co-taught with law professor Gregory Maggs. For its part, the university administration rightly refused the students’ demand. “Debate,” they noted, “is an essential part of our university’s academic and educational mission.”

The students’ petition arose following the High Court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he noted that abortion was not a right delineated within the Constitution and was therefore not under the purview of the federal government but rather each of the individual states.

Thomas’s clear and constitutionally consistent stance rubbed leftist abortion absolutists the wrong way, as non-constitutionally delineated “rights” have long been the Left’s excuse for creating a bigger and more intrusive central government. Thomas’s concurring opinion serves as a master class in constitutional jurisprudence, and a course taught by him should have been viewed as a once-in-a-lifetime privilege.

Adding to the irony is the fact that Thomas is the second black Supreme Court justice in U.S. history, and given the Left’s obsession with intersectionality, this alone should have precluded such a petition. In truth, as we’ve repeatedly noted, the Left isn’t at all interested in promoting ideological diversity.

While the school did stand by Thomas and refused to capitulate to the student mob, Thomas clearly wasn’t interested in creating a scene at the school. So he informed his co-lecturer that he wouldn’t be teaching this year. “Unfortunately,” Maggs relayed in an email, “I am writing with some sad news: Justice Thomas has informed me that he is unavailable to co-teach the seminar this fall. I know that this is disappointing.”

Disappointing indeed, at least for those who value free expression and respect our constitutional republic. This is certainly a big loss for GWU, but these are the bitter fruits of woke ideology.