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Georgetown professor behind controversial tweet suspended
Students at Georgetown University are reacting tonight as the school is doing damage control after a new law school faculty member posted a tweet criticizing President Biden potentially picking a Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. FOX 5's Tisha Lewis reports live from the campus.
WASHINGTON - Georgetown University is looking into tweets made by one of its newest law school faculty members.
On Monday, the University decided to place Ilya Shapiro on leave one day before he was scheduled to start his new role as the university’s senior lecturer and director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.
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Dean William Treanor sent a letter to the law school’s faculty, staff and students, saying in part, "Over the past several days, I have heard the pain and outrage of so many at Georgetown Law, and particularly from our Black female students, staff, alumni, and faculty. Ilya Shapiro’s tweets are antithetical to the work that we do here every day to build inclusion, belonging, and respect for diversity."
The tweet in question has since been deleted. But it was shared by Ilya Shapiro who said that President Biden would nominate not the objectively best pick but a "lesser" Black woman to be the next Supreme Court justice.
Shapiro's tweets were met with backlash from the law school’s Black Law Students Association and over 600 other Georgetown Law students and alumni who signed a petition calling for the school to fire Shapiro, citing his "racist rhetoric."
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The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, also known as FIRE, has come to Shapiro’s defense, urging Georgetown to use this controversy to reinforce the university’s commitment to freedom of expression.
The group states that there’s nothing to investigate and Dean William Treanor made the wrong decision in authorizing "this witch hunt," calling it an affront to free speech and fairness at Georgetown.
Meanwhile, some students are demanding Georgetown rescind Shapiro’s appointment and terminate its relationship with him entirely.
Talks about a sit-in are circulating on social media along with a reported "cry room" for upset students to voice their concerns.