Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites – An Insider's Account of Institutional Weakness and the Transformation of Law Schools

by Ilya Shapiro

A high-profile law professor who endured cancel culture firsthand lays bare the crisis in American law schools, and sounds the alarm over the threat of radicalization affecting future lawyers, politicians, and judges.

When Ilya Shapiro was hired at Georgetown University’s Center for the Constitution, it was an exciting new step in his career. Then he posted a controversial tweet that led to a media circus, heckling crowds of activist students, and a four-month investigation which eventually concluded that because he wasn’t an employee when he tweeted, he wasn’t subject to university policies—but that if he said something that offended anyone in future, he’d create a “hostile educational environment” and be subject to the inquisition again.

Recognizing that he couldn’t work under those conditions, Shapiro resigned and sounded the alarm. He saw the precarious status of free thought at law schools and what it meant for the future of our democracy. What happened wasn’t exclusive to him or to Georgetown; this form of illiberalism is a problem across higher education. More dangerously, it’s precipitating a national a corruption that goes to the heart of the American legal system. In Lawless, Shapiro shows how the warping of higher ed is leading to a country transformed by radicalization.

In this rigorously researched jeremiad against censorship, Shapiro demonstrates how the problem is bigger than emotional college kids, and more than just extreme overrepresentation of liberal professors—only three percent of the faculty at Harvard identifies as conservative. The new radicalism is rooted in an activist bureaucracy shaping future generations of American elites into extremists. These are America’s future judges, prosecutors, politicians, and presidents, and Shapiro contends they’ve stopped

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Education

272 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 14, 2025

Reviews

[Rick Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me get this straight. Ilya Shapiro got reprimanded for a tweet, something kind of rude, sure, but instead of just eating it and moving on, he blows it up into a full-blown Free Speech Crisis™ under the guise of "defending fundamental liberties."

The problem isn’t that his speech was being curtailed. It’s that he was rude, obnoxious, and his employer didn’t want to be associated with that. Reasonable, right? But in Shapiro’s mind, this is somehow not his fault for behaving like an internet troll, it’s the whole liberal establishment’s fault, from elite law schools to the prep-school-industrial complex. Apparently, we should all be allowed to say whatever we want without consequences because… reasons?

There are two glaring issues with this argument that never seem to get addressed in these free speech martyrdom stories.

First. What are these people actually talking about?

The book leans into this idea that "free speech proponents" seem to love, that "we should be able to debate everything, everywhere, at any time." Which, sure, if you’re 7 years old and have no ability to live in a grey area, lets do it. But in reality, most adults understand that there’s a balance, you can discuss serious topics when needed, and when in doubt, maybe just don’t be an asshole.

Lets be clear, the "free speech" Ilya consistently refers to is throwing shade at a supreme court nomination, and preemptively framing whoever would be nominated a "lesser black woman" because his pet judge wasn’t the obvious first choice. Was he on the search committee? No. Was he even close to the nomination process? No. Bro was an armchair pundit and tweeted his opinion. It's not like he's protesting the Vietnam War here. Ilya wanted to tweet something edgy and critical of a liberal SC nominee and got booped on the nose for it by his liberal employer.

Let’s also clarify, he didn't get fired, he quit. Our free speech protections are pretty solid, that’s what the First Amendment protections are about, it seems like those protections protected his ass. But I guess he felt "compelled to quit," the same way I did at 16 when I made out with a bunch of fellow lifeguards at the pool I worked at one summer and didn't want to return next summer for fear of "reasons."

Subpoint on this. A critical piece I keep searching for in these books. Do they engage with the substantive disagreement their mirror opponents have? Ilya cherry picks the screechiest of the CRT, like Robin DeAngelo (who I believe I compared to a “drunk Furby regurgitating nonsense words, trying to pick a fight at a bar” ), but never acknowledges that the powder keg of BLM and similar protest was set off by a set of very real grievance. Policing in America disproportionately impacts people of color, a la Michelle Alexander. Instead of interacting with real issues, it seems convenient to hide behind the Ad Hominem (Ad Groupium?) attacks that “well we don’t like the tone of their criticism” to dismiss these issues. 
My manifesto is that these free speech fights are rarely about actual engagement in debate. More often, they’re about the pursuit of saying whatever you want while refusing to acknowledge the grievances that led to the conflict in the first place. It’s not about fostering discussion or challenging ideas in a meaningful way; it’s about avoiding accountability under the guise of “open dialogue.”


The pattern is always the same: Someone makes a provocative or inflammatory statement, people react, sometimes angrily, sometimes through protest, its better for the original speaker the more outrageous it is, and instead of engaging with the substance of the pushback, the original speaker immediately pivots to claiming they’re being silenced. Free speech becomes a shield, not for open debate, but for avoiding difficult conversations.

This is why the “marketplace of ideas” framing that free speech absolutists love so much often rings hollow. A marketplace requires good faith participation, but in these cases, it’s rarely about debate at all. When someone like Shapiro gets criticized, the response isn’t, "Let’s discuss whether my argument holds up," it’s "I’m being attacked by the liberal mob." Instead of addressing real concerns about racial disparities in policing, institutional discrimination, or even basic decency, these figures double down on THEIR victimhood.

It’s also telling that the “right to speak” is always the hill to die on, never the responsibility to engage with criticism. No one is actually preventing Shapiro or his peers from airing their views. What they object to isn’t censorship, its consequences. They don’t want dialogue, they want a one-way megaphone.

If the goal were truly engagement, you’d see more effort to reckon with the criticism itself. Instead, the playbook is always the same:
1. Say something inflammatory.
2. Get pushback.
3. Ignore the pushback and claim persecution.
4. Write a book or land a media gig about how free speech is under attack.

It’s a predictable cycle that has nothing to do with actual debate, and everything to do with self-branding and grievance monetization.

I consider myself pretty open minded, but I’d rather listen to Neil Gorsuch talk about fly fishing for six hours than sit through another one of these tedious, self-important speeches about "cancel culture."

The second huge issue here is, where’s the evidence?
I studied economics, I want data. But instead of serious research, we get a handful of cherry-picked anecdotes of the Usual Suspects from Mainstream Cancel Culture trying to convince us that there's a nationwide red scare against conservative speakers. If this was actually a massive, systemic problem, I’d expect more than four random cases and citations from his buddy’s Free Speech Think Tank. Instead, we get FIRE treated like some global beacon of truth when it’s really just another politicized institution with an axe to grind against elite schools.

So what’s this book really about? A reasonably well-written temper tantrum. Shapiro got reprimanded for a weird tweet, maybe a 3/10 on the Internet’s scale of bad takes, and instead of handling it like an adult, he pouted, cried, and took his ball and went home. Then, rather than facing the idea that maybe he was just kind of an asshole, he spun it into a whole new career of free speech grifting. Honestly, I respect the hustle, probably easier than grading mediocre law papers and dealing with academia.

I don’t even disagree with his zoomed out points. Speech is good. Our country and a hundred years of Supreme Court precedent is based on protecting political speech. I just think the argument is so poorly constructed, self-serving, and divorced from reality that it falls flat. The book takes a tiny subset of overzealous college activists and acts like they represent the entire left, just like when people pretend Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks for the entire Republican Party. It’s lazy, it’s stupid, it’s repugnant to any reader who doesn’t immediately buy into in-group hivemind political think.

If you’re looking for a book that actually examines the chilling effects of speech, look elsewhere. This is just one guy who got smacked on the nose for being a Twitter dumbass and decided the real problem wasn’t him, it was the whole system.

Nice grift, Ilya.

[CSM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shapiro would have been my professor at Georgetown had it not been for the Shitlib Industrial Complex. Instead of a mentor- what would have been the first right-leaning mentor of my life - I received more Far Left grandstanding, which came in the form of partisan hacks masking their prejudice with jargon and cites to other left-wing authorities, asking me to either denounce or defend Shapiro. Naturally, there was a struggle session and potential disciplinary proceedings at the end of the defend route (I did it anyway). Shapiro, the man himself, never got to weigh in. All was by design. I would have loved to take his class.

I am grateful that I at least got to read Shapiro’s book, but it will never replace the mentorship that I and my fellow conservative and libertarian students desperately needed. I wonder where my career would have taken me had he been allowed to teach.

[Alex Helm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fascist drivel

[Madison · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only read the inside cover and already knew it was 1 star; ignorant view on censorship denying free speech

[Carolyn Kost · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, let's understand that free speech, protected by the First Amendment, means the government cannot restrict expression based on content. However, private entities, including private universities, are not bound by the First Amendment in the same way public institutions are. Private universities can set their own speech policies and enforce them as they see fit. While many value academic freedom, they are not legally required to uphold First Amendment protections.

Second, let's define academic freedom: the principle that scholars, researchers, and educators have the right to explore, teach, and discuss ideas without fear of censorship, retaliation, or institutional interference. It protects their ability to pursue truth, challenge conventional wisdom, and engage in open debate, even on controversial topics. Again, private institutions can set their own limits based on their values and policies.

Now we can proceed.

Ilya Shapiro’s book is more than just a recounting of his own personal controversy—it is a deep dive into the broader battle over free speech, academic freedom, and ideological conformity in higher education, particularly in law schools. Rather than a mere defense of his own actions, Shapiro situates his experience within a larger trend of what he sees as the decline of free intellectual inquiry and the rise of ideological orthodoxy in legal academia.

At its core, Shapiro argues that law schools are failing in their fundamental mission: to train skilled lawyers who can argue from all perspectives and uphold the principles of the rule of law. Instead, he contends, they have become centers of ideological enforcement, where dissenting views are unwelcome, and a progressive orthodoxy reigns supreme. He provides numerous examples beyond his own case, including the treatment of Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford, where students and administrators disrupted his speech, and incidents at Yale and UC Hastings, where conservative speakers were effectively shouted down. Shapiro warns that if such trends continue, the legal profession itself will suffer, as future lawyers will be trained not in the rigorous application of the law, but in ideological activism.

One of the most compelling aspects of the book is Shapiro’s discussion of the broader cultural and psychological shifts that have contributed to this environment. Drawing on works like The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, he traces how changes in parenting, education, and social norms have created a generation of students who see disagreement as harm and speech as violence. This, he argues, has led to the entrenchment of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) bureaucracies that often prioritize ideological conformity over open debate. He critiques mandatory diversity training programs and identity-based preferences as exacerbating the problem rather than fostering genuine inclusivity.

Shapiro offers a four-part proposal for reform: abolishing DEI bureaucracies, ending mandatory diversity training, stopping political coercion, and eliminating identity-based preferences in hiring and admissions.

His call for free speech and academic freedom is not inherently political. It is essential to the functioning of both universities and democratic society at large. If law schools continue down their current path, they will cease to produce lawyers capable of engaging in rigorous legal reasoning and instead churn out activists who see law as a tool for ideological enforcement rather than a framework for justice.

His book raises important questions about the role of universities, the purpose of legal education, and the state of free speech in America. It is a provocative and timely read for anyone concerned with the future of higher education and the legal profession.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely give books 5 stars, but Lawless is a very important book. It focuses on legal education, but many if not all of the lessons are applicable to all university education. And perhaps to high school education. From a rightful condemnation of “hate speech“ has evolved cosseting restrictions upon any kind of advocacy that does not meet current orthodoxy. Put bluntly, adults should not need protection from opinions they do not like or they do not belong in college or law school. They belong in the continued nurturing of their parents in their own bedrooms.

The backstory is the authors mistreatment at Georgetown law school. He was hired as a professor and, before his employment sent a tweet that criticized the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice. But his own admission the Tweet’s wording was “inartful.” he was suspended for a four month “investigation.“ This “investigation“ was dragged out so it’s conclusion would be announced after students have left the campus.

I will not spoil the book for readers. It is important for anyone who believes in American style free speech.

[Michael Springer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Law schools (and universities writ large) were originally designed to teach students to think critically, advance arguments and respect opponents. In the last decade that system has been turned on its head by far-left professors, activist administrators and weak-kneed leadership. In many (most) universities today, opposing ideas cannot be tolerated, and even the validity of our system of laws is rejected. Ilya Shapiro -- no stranger to cancel culture himself -- describes how this situation came to be and the alarming implications for the next generation of lawmakers, representatives and judges.

[Allan Nemer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting subject, good writing, but I would not call it a great book. It helped me to understand current events and gave good background information on why the news regarding colleges is the way it is.

[Emmet Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a while there, we were totally fucked. In many ways we still are.

Some reasonable solutions in here to “free speech on campus” issues, but the whole thing is weighed down by the “woe is me” storyline that flows throughout.

[Hans Voorn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please avoid this book unless you have grown tired of watching Fox News all day. Definitely a book for the right wing/MAGA crowd. If that is your cup of tea, this is your book.