Stanford lifts graduation hold on law student who made satirical flyer for fake Federalist Society event
Stanford Law School. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.
Third-year Stanford Law School student Nicholas Wallace was informed on the last day of classes that the school was placing a hold on his degree as it investigated a complaint about his satirical flyer promoting a fake insurrection event sponsored by the Federalist Society.
Wallace’s January flyer, emailed to an email discussion list, promoted a fake Stanford Federalist Society event titled, “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection.”
The flyer said guest speakers supporting violent insurrection included Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Stanford Law School drops threat to withhold law student s graduation diploma after he wrote satirical flier mocking Sen. Josh Hawley and Texas AG Ken Paxton for inciting the Capitol riot
Nicholas Wallace, 33, sent a satirical flier to a Stanford Law School email listserv on January 25 parodying the school s Federalist Society and Hawley and Paxton
Titled The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection, it promoted a fake event on January 6 welcoming the Republicans to speak about violent insurrection Violent insurrection, also known as doing a coup, is a classical system of installing a government, the flier read
The college s right-wing Federalist Society filed a complaint claiming the student defamed it
Published Jun 3, 2021 Updated Jun 3, 2021, 2:28 pm CDT
Stanford University reversed its decision to ban a law student from graduating following a massive social media uproar. The university initially said it would not let him graduate for emailing a satirical flyer poking fun at federalists. Featured Video Hide
“We’re glad that Stanford finally backed down, but it should not take a Twitter firestorm to figure out that administrators should not be conducting investigations into student political speech,” Adam B. Steinbaugh, a director at Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), told the Daily Dot on Thursday. Advertisement Hide
FIRE, which defends students and faculty members’ right to free speech, sent Stanford University a letter on Tuesday voicing its concern over the fate of Nicholas Wallace’s degree and claiming that the investigation would violate the University’s “commitment to freedom o