‘ANTITHETICAL’

Georgetown Law Puts Administrator on Leave Over ‘Appalling’ SCOTUS Tweets

Dean Bill Treanor said Ilya Shapiro will remain on leave as the university conducts an internal investigation.

Georgetown Law has placed Ilya Shapiro—the incoming executive director of the school’s Center for the Constitution—on administrative leave over his tweet about President Biden’s commitment to picking a Black woman for the Supreme Court. In a statement released Monday, Dean Bill Treanor said, “Ilya Shapiro’s tweets are antithetical to the work that we do here every day to build inclusion, belonging, and respect for diversity.” He added that he has placed Shapiro on leave as the university conducts an internal investigation to determine whether or not the Cato Institute vice president violated institutional policies. In the contentious tweet—which Treanor called “appalling” last week—Shapiro lamented that his personal choice to fill the SCOTUS seat will be skipped over because he “doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman.” He later told Reason that he regretted the choice of words, claiming that they ultimately detracted from his intended message that meant to denounce racism.