Ep. 235: Cancel culture, legal education, and the Supreme Court with Ilya Shapiro

Over the years, elite institutions shifted from fostering open
debate to enforcing ideological conformity. But as guest Ilya
Shapiro puts it, “the pendulum is swinging back.” He shares his
firsthand experience with cancel culture and how the American Bar
Association’s policies influence legal education. Shapiro also
opines on major free speech cases before the Supreme Court,
including the TikTok ownership battle and Texas’ age verification
law for adult content.


Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies
at the Manhattan Institute. He previously (and briefly) served as
executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center
for the Constitution and as a vice president at the Cato
Institute. His latest book, “Lawless: The Miseducation of
America’s Elites,” is out now.


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Read the transcript.


Timestamps: 


00:00 Intro


02:58 Shapiro’s Georgetown controversy


15:07 Free speech on campus


26:51 Law schools’ decline


40:47 Legal profession challenges


42:33 The “vibe shift” away from cancel culture


56:02 TikTok and age verification at the Supreme Court


01:03:37 Anti-Semitism on campus


01:09:36 Outro


Show notes:


- “The illiberal takeover of law schools” City Journal (2022)


- “Poll finds sharp partisan divisions on the impact of a Black
woman justice.” ABC News (2022)


- “Why I quit Georgetown.” Ilya Shapiro, The Wall Street Journal
(2022)


- “Georgetown’s investigation of a single tweet taking longer
than 12 round-trips to the moon.” FIRE (2022)


- Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023)


- Lamont v. Postmaster General (1965)


- TikTok Inc v. Garland (2025)


- Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (2024)


- Ginsberg v. New York (1968)


- International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
(IHRA) working definition of antisemitism (last updated 2025)