Perspective
Have been reading more about the HLS kerfuffle.
One article that caught my eye was this one.
I found it interesting because, well, it just goes to show how things change depending on your mindset.
When I look at Harvard Law School, I don’t see a bastion of white privilege. I see a community of a bunch of people who got 3.8s as undergrads or 175+ on the LSAT, with all the pathologies that come with that.
It’s pretty left-wing, as almost all top universities tend to be, and it’s kind of over-sensitive on the issue of race, as are almost all institutions that are both very hard to get into and engaged in the use of racial preferences in their admissions processes. [Hint: if you want the white and Asian students to stop looking at their black and Hispanic classmates funny, admit the black and Hispanic students on the same basis.]
Anyway. Aside from a new dean who seems rather clueless — I doubt that Dean Kagan would have responded the way she did — HLS seems to be in pretty good shape. (Well, except for all that “living tree” stuff. But that’s not a problem with HLS specifically — that’s a problem with a whole generation of legal academics.)
A couple quick thoughts on this story: First, it sure sounds like the email is part of an ongoing conversation, doesn’t it? Second, it sure sounds like the author was staking out a less controversial position than the recipient, doesn’t it?
I’ve often been told I shouldn’t write anything in an email I wouldn’t want to see in the morning paper. Always good advice!* Maybe it should be amended though: don’t write anything in email you’re not cc’ing to your arch nemesis, because you just might be.
*As a lawyer, if she becomes a litigator anyway, she will soon wish that everyone would stop sending so many damn emails. E-discovery is no fun for anyone.
Dollars to doughnuts, at the dinner discussion the recipient (who is the real villainess of the piece, if you ask me) was staking out the genetic differences side and Grace was defending the socio-economic and cultural factors side — and defending it a bit more strongly than her actual views were, hence the corrective e-mail.
Apparently this (the leaking of the e-mail) was all over _a man_. (Law school is so much like high school.)
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May soon head back into law myself. Not sure whether it’ll be north or south of the border. (If north, starting again this fall; if south, starting a year and a half from now. My twenties were such a waste — if I could go back to 2002, I’d tell my 21 y/o self to apply to Columbia Law School, and to go.)
Agree on all counts about the email. And especially about law school being like high school.
Don’t worry too much about missing out on CLS in 2002. You’d probably have been a junior associate in 2008-2009 if you had. From personal experience this has not been a great place to be lately. The legal industry went through an unprecedented boom, and then an unprecedented bust. If you’re thinking seriously about US law schools, I’m happy to share any advice I can about the two I’ve attended. And rumor-monger about the rest. Do you have my email?
Only your law school one, which almost certainly has expired.
Shoot a line to one of the alumni accounts attached to my Facebook profile — that’ll get to my standard Gmail inbox. Am happy to hear any stories about your two schools.
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On the merits of that (genetics vs. environment) argument, incidentally, I tend to be persuaded by Thomas Sowell. (As I tend to be on most things. Except for military coups.)