(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Georgetown Law students learned on late Sunday evening and Monday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions would be speaking on campus on Tuesday “about free speech on college campuses.”

Immediately, many groups started planning protests and a third of the faculty signed a letter to “condemn the hypocrisy of Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaking about free speech.”

The sense that Sessions might not be operating in good faith when he decried “safe spaces” deepened when more than 100 students had their invitations to the noon event revoked.

“Someone shared the general form [to sign up], which had no restrictions beyond having to be a student,” says Daniel Blauser, a third year law student at Georgetown and the president of the Georgetown Law American Constitution Society.

Then, shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Monday, some 130 students who applied for attendance through the official channel received an email telling them that “the email you subsequently received indicating you have a seat for the event was in error. Our records indicate that you were not part of the Center [for the Constitution]’s student invitation list, which includes student fellows of the Center (students who signed up to attend events sponsored by the Center) and students enrolled in the classes taught this semester by the Center’s Director, Professor Randy Barnett.”

Barnett, described in the New York Times as a “passionate libertarian,” will follow the remarks by leading a conversation about free speech, a topic that has come to mean liberal intolerance of conservative ideas, especially on college campuses, for many members of the right.

Blauser points to the “complete irony of the situation: in a speech about free speech on campus that’s trying to decry college safe spaces, Georgetown and Attorney General Sessions are creating a safe space.”

He adds that groups like the Georgetown Law American Constitution Society, Georgetown Law American Civil Liberties Union, the school’s National Lawyer’s Guild chapter, Georgetown Law Students for Democratic Reform, Georgetown Black Law Students Association, and more had an “emphasis on being respectful and giving him a chance to speak during the discussion about how to show our dissent about Jeff Session’s policies and beliefs.”

According to CNN, Sessions plans to discuss how universities are “transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos,” according to a person familiar with the event.

Protesting speakers on campus is nothing new. Last week, about 50 Howard students shouted down convocation speaker James Comey, former director of the FBI, citing the surveillance of minority groups like Black Lives Matter under his tenure at the law enforcement agency. Comey resumed his speech after about 10 minutes, saying, “I love the enthusiasm of the young folks, I just wish they would understand what a conversation is.”

Blauser says he and others are “suspicious [Georgetown] came across the planning” for demonstrations and that’s why they disinvited students. “The manner in which they decided who could attend is highly unusual. It seems like they were trying to set up a sympathetic audience.”

Barnett, the law professor, said on Twitter that “many events at [Georgetown Center for the Constitution]—including appearances by AGs—are by invite only without complaint.”

While professors have registered their protest by taking a knee, Georgetown Law has not responded to a request for comment.

However the dean of students, Mitch Bailin, and vice dean Jane Aiken sent an email on Tuesday morning that described three “zones on campus where protesters may gather today to be heard and seen before and during the Attorney General’s visit … Our DPS officers and staff will not interfere with peaceable protests, but will take appropriate steps to ensure that our buildings and staff remain secure and safe for all the academic and co-curricular activities taking place today, including asking protesters to move to those designated zones.”

Those zones are the steps of McDonough Hall, where Sessions is speaking, the platform outside the Second Street entrance to McDonough Hall, and “the section of the Tower Green abutting the driveway from New Jersey Avenue and the DPS guard hut,” per the email.

Blauser says that he and other groups’ current plan is to protest on the steps in front of
McDonough Hall. “We’re encouraging protesters to wear tape over their mouth,” he says. “And bring signs with questions they would have liked to have asked AG Sessions and to show solidarity against this entire fiasco.”

When asked why he was protesting Sessions, Blauser brought up the “the irony of the administration saying that free speech on campus is under threat while calling for NFL players who protest to be fired,” the crackdown on government whistleblowers, “embrace of outdated, racist criminal justice policies,” and the “dismantling of civil justice programs,” for starters.

“Frankly, how long do you have?” Blauser asked. “This could go on for a while.”

Circa is livestreaming the protests:

According to The Daily Beast, Sessions’ speech had more than 100 open seats.

Updated with information about the speech’s attendance.

Filed Under: constitution, free speech, georgetown, jeff sessions,