A midnight tweet got free-speech scholar Ilya Shapiro canceled in a woke witch hunt
Ilya Shapiro, a quiet legal scholar known as a fierce free speech advocate, never planned on testing his principles firsthand.
Yet in January 2022 — with Donald Trump’s election victory and the exposure of moral bankruptcy at American universities still a long way off — that’s exactly what Mr. Shapiro had to do. He fell victim to the censorious “cancel culture” regnant at American universities after a tweet he posted. He went from being a fairly anonymous academic to having his name associated with the ravages of the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) complex, and with the rot pervading American law schools.
“I felt my professional life, if not my whole life, crumbing over a tweet,” says Mr. Shapiro. “My parents’ sacrifices, bringing me from the Soviet Union, and decades of my hard work were suddenly at risk.”
Over his 15 years as a constitutional expert at the center-right libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., the Russian-born Shapiro built a strong reputation with his writing, lectures, and legal briefs. In late 2021, he accepted an offer to lead Georgetown University’s Center for the Constitution.
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