After Student Outcry, Chicago Law School Immigration Debate Is Spiked
Karen Sloan reports on the latest from the University of Chicago Law School.
A controversial immigration debate at the University of Chicago Law School this week has been indefinitely postponed by student organizers citing an “unacceptably high risk of serious disturbance.”
The law school’s Edmund Burke Society—which bills itself as a “conservative parliamentary debating society”—touched off a campus outcry last week when it invited students to the Feb. 6 debate dubbed “Resolved: Raise the Bar” with a so-called whip sheet that many found offensive. The whip sheet was intended to serve as a call to Edmund Burke Society members to participate in the event.
“Instead of being a porcelain receptacle for other nations’ wretched refuse, the United States should again put America first,” the whip sheet reads. Immigration has “diluted national unity” and “crushed domestic wages,” it continues, before offering a counterargument that immigration should be reformed, not restricted.
A group of students responded on the law school’s listserv calling the whip sheet racist and raising concerns over the debating society’s events, with the backlash generating coverage on Above the Law. A group of students planned to silently protest during the debate, while the school’s Law Students Association is planning to hold a town hall to discuss the matter Monday evening.
KJ