The dean of Georgetown Law wrote in a letter today that the conservative activist who Trump named as Washington’s top federal prosecutor had launched “an attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution” by demanding explanations about Georgetown’s DEI policies.
William M. Treanor, the dean and executive vice president of Georgetown Law, confirmed to NBC News that he sent a letter to Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, writing that a letter from Martin that arrived this week “challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution” and violated “a bedrock principle of constitutional law.”
Martin, a “stop the steal” organizer who advocated for Jan. 6 defendants and had no prosecutorial experience before he was appointed by Trump on Inauguration Day, wrote in a letter first published by a right-wing media outlet that he had “begun an inquiry” into Georgetown’s policies, and wrote that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would not hire anyone affiliated with a law school or university that continued to teach DEI.
Treanor wrote in his letter to Martin that the principle that “sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding” was “a moral and educational imperative” that “defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution.”
The First Amendment, Treanor wrote, “guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it,” noting that the Supreme Court “has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university’s First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it.”
Martin, Treanor wrote, was threatening to deny students and graduates of Georgetown opportunities until Martin approved their curriculum, and Treanor said they looked forward to confirming that applicants for employment would receive “full and fair consideration” in the future, adding that the Constitution was clearly on Georgetown’s side.
“Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution,” Treanor wrote.