Georgetown Law professor targeted by cancel culture resigns just days just after being reinstated

Just days after being reinstated as a law professor at Georgetown University, Ilya Shapiro announced his resignation in a scorching letter on Monday.

Shapiro was previously placed on administrative leave following an attack campaign led by students that called for his firing for saying that the nominees to the US Supreme Court should be those who possess the utmost qualifications in their field, regardless of their racial or gender identity.

"Although I scored a technical victory last week and was reinstated, @GeorgetownLaw and its diversicrats created a hostile work environment that made my remaining on the job untenable," Ilya Shapiro said on Twitter.

Shapiro attached his lengthy letter of resignation which stated that Georgetown's Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action (IDEAA), "no longer stands for tolerance, respect, good faith, self-reflective learning, and generous service to others."

"I cannot again subject my family to the public attacks on my character and livelihood that you and IDEAA have now made foreseeable, indeed inevitable," Shapiro noted in the letter. "As a result of the hostile work environment that you and they have created, I have no choice but to resign."

Last week, Shapiro was reinstated after a four-month long investigation by the administration where he celebrated that "victory" and said, "I'm gratified that I'll get to do the job for which I was hired more than four months ago. All students in my programs can expect to be accorded the freedom to think and speak freely and to be treated equally: a diversity of ideas will be most welcome."

However, Shapiro explained that Georgetown University set him up for failure in his new role and outlined the woke nonsense which prevents him from fulfilling his duties.

"Although I celebrated my 'technical victory' in the Wall Street Journal, further analysis shows that you've made it impossible for me to fulfill the duties of my appointed post," Shapiro wrote in his letter.

"You cleared me on a jurisdictional technicality, but the IDEAA [Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirming Action] Report—and your own statements to the Law Center community—implicitly repealed Georgetown's vaunted Speech and Expression Policy and set me up for discipline the next time I transgress progressive orthodoxy," Shapiro explained. "You told me when we met last week that you want me to be successful in my new role and that you will "have my back." But instead, you've painted a target on my back such that I could never do the job I was hired for, advancing the mission of the Center for the Constitution."

Shapiro went on to slam the professionals at Georgetown Law and said that "only those acting in bad faith to get me fired because of my political beliefs would misconstrue what I said to suggest otherwise."

Slamming the cancel culture mob, Shapiro explained in the letter that he had deleted his Tweet "well before any student was likely to learn of it." In return, he said that he was not intending to "cause harm" and noted that those who took screenshots of his Tweet were out to harm Shapiro, instead.

"It was they...who intentionally and unknowingly caused any harm to any student who later came to learn of a read their screen captures of the tweet. It is they, not I, who are morally culpable for any such resulting harm," Shapiro noted.

As the letter progressed, Shapiro slammed the University's "anti-harassment policy" which would prevent him from using free speech as the policy states that if an individual is offended by another individual's comments, it would be a violation of their policy.

"Georgetown has adopted what First Amendment jurisprudence describes as an impermissible 'heckler's veto,'" Shapiro explained. "All sorts of comments that someone—anyone—could find offensive would subject me to disciplinary action...this would be a huge Sword of Damocles over my head as I try to engage in my educational mission."

Shapiro outlined hypotheticals that would result in disciplinary action:

• Later this month, I laud Supreme Court decisions that overrule Roe v. Wade and protect the right to carry arms. A campus activist claims that my comments "deny women's humanity" and makes her feel "unsafe" and "directly threatened with physical violence."
• In August, when I'm meeting with students concerned about my ability to treat everyone fairly, as you've asked me to do, one attendee, upon hearing my defense of free speech and equality of opportunity, files a complaint because I am "disingenuous" and the "embodiment of white supremacy."
• In October, when the Court hears arguments in the Harvard/UNC affirmative action cases, I express the opinion that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits racial preferences in college admissions. Hundreds of Georgetown community members sign a letter asserting that my comments "are antithetical to the work that we do here every day to build inclusion, belonging, and respect for diversity" (quoting your statements of January 31 and June 2).
• Later this fall, in a class I'm teaching, a student feels uncomfortable with his assigned position in a mock oral argument in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a case on next term's docket that considers whether a designer can be compelled to create a website for a same-sex wedding. "To argue that someone can deny service to members of the LGBTQIA+ community is to treat our brothers and sisters as second-class citizens and I will not participate in Shapiro's denigrating charade," he writes on the student listserv.

Shapiro continued and said, "The freedom to speak unless someone finds what you say offensive or infringing some nebulous conception of equity is no freedom at all."

"Your treatment of me—starting with the launch of a sham investigation that apparently could've been resolved by looking at a calendar—shows how the University applies even these self-contradicting free speech 'principles' in an inconsistent manner, depending on where on the ideological spectrum an 'offense' arises," he added.

In his conclusion, Shapiro slammed the University's hypocrisy and said, "In contrast to the Jesuitical values that you're fond of reciting, this institution no longer stands for tolerance, respect, good faith, self-reflective learning, and generous service to others."

Shapiro suggested that Georgetown Law's "treatment of me suggests that neither the due process of law nor justice actually prevails," in contrast to the school's motto: "Law is but the means, justice is the end."