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.

Enjoy listening to our podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more. If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at thefire.org and would like access to Substack’s paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@thefire.org.

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)