Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Campus speech roundup

  • At UCLA as elsewhere, pledges and obligatory statements about diversity threaten academic freedom [Robert Shibley, Minding the Campus, Paul Caron/TaxProf, Christian Schneider, New York Post, earlier]
  • 2019, 1673, whatever: By calling ourselves “inclusive,” Cambridge explains, we mean “there is no place here for” those who fail to accept key tenets of faith and morals [Robby Soave] He “had just chosen to move from Australia, the country where he earned his degrees and spent most of his career, to China. Why? Because, as a researcher, he has more freedom in China.” [Peggy Sastre, Quillette] Heresy hunts in American academia aren’t exactly new, consider what happened fifty years ago to once-lauded “culture of poverty” anthropologist Oscar Lewis [Bryan Caplan]
  • Remarkable glossary of terms “intended to structure and referee conversations on campus” circulates at Amherst College, whose Office of Diversity and Inclusion has a staff of 20, more than one for every hundred of the institution’s 1800 students [Rand Richards Cooper, Commonweal via Christina Sommers] University of Michigan has at least 82 full-time diversity officers at payroll cost of $10.6 million, a sum would cover full in-state tuition for 708 students [Mark Perry on Twitter] At the University of Texas, diversity-related staffers cost $9.5 million annually [Derek Draplin, College Fix]
  • Some conservatives do their bit to undermine academic freedom when they try to get professors fired for bad speech unrelated to teaching and scholarship [David French, Robby Soave]
  • Law schools debate whether to be even more ideological, although the product of the academy is supposed to be knowledge rather than activism [John McGinnis responding to Samuel Moyn] Outcry after Emory Law School suspends professor who had uttered racial slur in context of critically describing others as using the slur [Paul Caron/TaxProf, more]
  • Rhode Island student drummed out of state college for not advancing “value of social and economic justice” can take his case to a jury, rules state’s high court; Cato Institute had filed amicus brief on his behalf [Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran]

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3 Comments

  • The Emory Law School case is quite egregious. The prof was trying to illustrate “fighting words” and assault IIRC. It is like the case in England law school where students did not want to hear about rape. It leaves students unprepared to practice law.

    The loyalty oaths at colleges are very bad. I had applied to one and there was no way as a conservative (who has tons of minority friends) to write an acceptable diversity pledge to get past the review committee. It is a political litmus test, but they don’t view it that way.

    The diversity and inclusion staff are one way that colleges have such rising costs, along with proliferation of high-paid deans and fancy student-services facilities.

    • By cc

    • cc,
      Don’t forget the “Student Activity” fees. We all know where that money goes.

  • RE: RI. Having to fight for a decade to get a college not to discriminate against you doesn’t seem like a victory to me.

    • By SPO