MAJOR UPDATE: DEI Dean Steinbach has LEFT Stanford!

July 20, 2023

Today, free speech WON.  

Our calls for sanity were heard. Our demands for accountability were met. And a little bit of integrity was restored at Stanford Law School.  

If you haven’t heard yet, I am honored to share this breaking news with you: 

Stanford University announced today that the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Tirien Steinbach has LEFT the university … just months after Speech First initially launched a public campaign to hold Dean Steinbach accountable. 

Let’s retrace the timeline: this spring, Stanford’s DEI Dean made national headlines when she stepped up to the podium at a Federalist Society event with Fifth Circuit Appellate Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School. 

Judge Duncan was invited to campus by the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. But at the student-hosted event, he faced a hostile mob who interrupted his speech, shouted him down, and attempted to confront him. 

Then Associate Dean Steinbach took the microphone, only to tell Judge Duncan that he was causing harm to Stanford Law students simply by speaking and expressing his beliefs. 

You and I can recognize this as part of an outrageous pattern of anti-free-speech, anti-free-thinking behavior – and that’s why, with your support, Speech First leapt into action.  

With your help, we rallied thousands of free speech advocates, like you, and brought a pressure campaign down upon Stanford — unlike anything the institution has ever experienced.  

This victory is further evidence that our collective voice as free speech advocates wield POWER.  And that open discourse still matters in higher education.  

In other words, your support of Speech First and your signature on our petition MADE A DIFFERENCE.  

America must be a place where free speech is celebrated and university officials, like Dean Tirien Steinbach, who seek to silence differing viewpoints must be forcefully condemned. We can’t afford to let our legal system be corrupted by ideologically driven administrators.  

Today is not only a great day for Speech First and supporters like you, who helped us get to this point – but also a great day for all free speech loving Americans. 

Thank you for your support in making this victory possible. 

Cherise Trump
Executive Director
Speech First