Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne vowed on Wednesday to protect free speech and open expression after Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was verbally accosted by student protesters and a diversity administrator.

Duncan, a Trump appointee, was invited last month to deliver remarks at an event hosted by the school’s Federalist Society chapter but was shouted down by leftist protesters who called the federal judge a “liar” and “scumbag.” When he called for a school administrator to defuse the incident, Stanford Law School Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach added to the students’ complaints by lecturing Duncan and claiming he was fomenting “division.”

Tessier-Lavigne, who previously offered an apology to Duncan and asserted that Steinbach’s monologue did not reflect school policy on safeguarding free expression, said in a letter to Stanford employees and students that administrators would introduce new initiatives to “strengthen the norms and values that support a robust learning community at Stanford.”

“Universities are called on to be places of vigorous and thoughtful inquiry, not only of ideas palatable to the mainstream, but of a broad array of ideas, including challenges to mainstream views. Our role is to provide knowledge, nuance, and an approach based in truth-seeking and reasoned discussion,” Tessier-Lavigne wrote. “But we will only be able to achieve that goal, I believe, if we approach new ideas and perspectives with curiosity, and with respect for the dignity of each member of our community. This includes assuming good intent in the people one disagrees with and giving them grace.”

The administrator told students and staff members that the new free expression initiatives would apply to “classrooms, residences, and offices” and will be shared with future applicants who consider Stanford. “As we enter the final quarter of this academic year, let us recommit ourselves to rising above the lowest-common-denominator discourse,” he continued. “Let us aspire to open, curious, and reasoned engagement with one another.”

The additional vow to protect free speech came days after Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho and Eleventh Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch announced that they would no longer hire any clerks who chose to attend Stanford Law School in reaction to the response to Duncan. Both judges, also Trump appointees, had previously said that they would no longer hire from Yale Law School over similar concerns.

“My concern is how law students are treating everyone else they disagree with. I’m concerned about what this is doing to the legal profession and to our country,” Ho said in a speech for the Texas Review of Law and Politics. “Students learn all the wrong lessons. They practice all the wrong tactics. And then they graduate and bring these tactics to workplaces across the country. What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. And it’s tearing our country apart.”

Duncan reacted to the Stanford debacle in a speech at the University of Notre Dame. He contended that the student hecklers were engaged in activity that “had nothing to do with our proud American tradition of free speech” but was “rather a parody of it.”

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“It had everything to do with intimidation. And to be clear, not intimidating me,” he continued. “I’m not intimidated by this. I’m a life-tenured judge. I’m going to go back to my court and keep writing opinions. No, the target of the intimidation was the protesters’ fellow students.”

Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson was elected on Tuesday as the next mayor of Chicago, defeating moderate rival and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas to succeed the incumbent Lori Lightfoot.

The three Democrats competed in a February primary election which disqualified Lightfoot, who finished third against Johnson and Vallas, rendering her the first Chicago mayor in four decades to lose her re-election bid. Johnson had clinched 51.4% of the tabulated vote as of late Tuesday night with 91% of expected ballots reporting, while Vallas had 48.6%.

“Tonight is the beginning of a Chicago that truly invests in all of its people,” Johnson said in his victory speech. “The heart of this movement has always been about investing in people.”

Johnson garnered criticism throughout the campaign, which centered largely on the city’s struggles to handle rising violent crime, for his description of the “defund the police” movement as an “actual, real political goal” in a 2020 radio interview. He denounced the statement in later interviews, which Vallas made a feature in his campaign advertisements.

Lawlessness indeed rose dramatically during Lightfoot’s four-year tenure. There were 490 homicides in the Windy City as of 2019, the year in which Lightfoot assumed office, while murders soared to 772 in 2020 and 800 in 2021, marking an increase of more than 58% as nationwide Black Lives Matter protests occurred in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Lightfoot, who has a personal police unit with 71 officers assigned to protect her life, meanwhile proposed eliminating $80 million from the Chicago Police Department budget in 2020.

Johnson said on his campaign website that he will “work with police and first responders to invest in community-based interventions that de-escalate conflict, reduce violence and make our neighborhoods safer.” Vallas, on the other hand, vowed on his website that he would increase the number of sworn officers and consider public safety a “basic human right.”

Vallas was endorsed by the Chicago Police Union, while Johnson was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, which provoked criticism in the wake of government lockdowns for opposing the rollback of virtual instruction.

Prominent businesses such as food processing company Tyson, airplane manufacturer Boeing, and construction machinery firm Caterpillar have announced that they would shutter major offices or move their headquarters from Chicago in recent months. Lightfoot, who excused her primary election loss by noting that she is a “black woman in America,” nevertheless said on her campaign website that she was “committed to attracting new businesses” and “creating an environment that supports and sustains entrepreneurs and workers.”

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The “tax fairness plan” released by Johnson would increase taxes on “big corporations and the ultra-rich” through a per-employee “head tax” and new fees on hotel reservations. Chicago has the second-highest tax burden in the nation for combined state and local sales tax rates, according to a 2021 study from the Tax Foundation.

Businesses have also fled the city in response to higher crime rates. Ken Griffin, the former richest man in Illinois and current chief executive of hedge fund Citadel, moved much of his personal estate and business to Miami in response to the phenomenon. He indicated during one interview that a breaking point was the violent assault of two separate colleagues: the former was robbed after a person put “a gun to his head” during a coffee run, and another was attacked by “some random lunatic just trying to punch him in the head” while he was waiting for a car.