Mark Levin’s wild law school tale: When a Playboy centerfold sparked a liberal-on-liberal fight

Mark Levin pulls no punches when it comes to the state of postsecondary education in America.

Commenting on the recent assault of Jay Sani, brutally beaten in February for wearing a MAGA hat on campus, Levin declares, “Washington State University, like virtually every other university or college in America, sucks.”

This incident reflects Levin’s broader concerns about academia. He laments that it’s nearly impossible “to get an education without the ideology, without the propaganda, without demagogic faculty members, without feeling threatened by people in your class.”

Reflecting on his own college experience, Levin recalls a time when “the professors were liberal, but they weren’t talking about blowing up America.”

“I don’t remember a single Islamist professor. In fact, I don’t remember a single Islamist student (I didn’t say Muslim; I said Islamist). I don’t remember anybody in there saying ‘death to America’ or ‘we have to overthrow the American Empire’ or any of that stuff,” he adds.

Sure, there were some Marxists and lefties, “But nothing like there is today.”

Free speech was also respected, even by those on the left.

“I would stir the pot, you know. I remember in history and political science and these other relatively useless courses that I took, I remember saying things in order to get a rise out of a couple of the students,” he recalls. But that was OK because “there really was free speech.”

This reminiscing led him to recall a memorable moment from his law school days at Temple University Law School in North Philadelphia. In his constitutional law and civil rights class, taught by a professor who was also “the vice chairman of the Philadelphia ACLU,” a provocative stunt became one of his fondest memories.

One day, “This professor brings out a copy of either Playboy or Penthouse, and he opens it to the centerfold and says, ‘Is this First Amendment-protected free speech?’”

The majority of the women in the class, who “were all radical left-wing kooks” and walked around “bra-less,” objected, screamed in outrage, and stormed out of the room.

“I’m sitting in the back, and I’m laughing. Why? Because here you have the liberals fighting with the liberals, the left is fighting with the left,” Levin recalls. “That was about as entertaining as law school ever got, to be perfectly honest with you.”

For more details on this unforgettable story and Levin’s reflections on the state of higher education, watch the clip above.

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