MORE ON GEORGETOWN LAW’S DIVERSITY PROBLEM, FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Justice Scalia, a Law School and Diversity of Thought.
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia has set off a debate at the Georgetown University law school about the appearance of institutional endorsements and intellectual diversity.
Some professors are criticizing the law school for a statement on Justice Scalia’s death that they say ignores parts of his record with which many disagree. These professors shared their views in emails to all students and faculty members. And their sharing of their criticism of Scalia in that way has other professors saying that their positive views of Scalia are being denigrated, and that students are thus being discouraged from expressing certain conservative or libertarian opinions.
The various emails are all being published online, adding to the debate.
If the race/gender breakdown of a school should approximate that of America as a whole, why not the ideological distribution?
Plus, some related thoughts from Professor Bainbridge.
Apparently Peller emailed (privately as opposed to an all-campus blast) Barnett to apologize: “Please accept my apology, as I have great affection and respect for you as a colleague.” This is typical of Peller and the academic left in general: To your face they claim to be your friend, but they will throw you under the bus in a heartbeat to achieve their political ends. Like their fellow Marxists of olden day, the only thing that matters is their political triumph and all means are therefore justified.
The diagnosis by Barnett and Rosenkranz is exactly right. Law schools faculties are comprised of a predominance of left-liberals living (at salaries most socialists could only dream of) in a cozy elite bubble in which they assume almost everybody shares their worldview and that the few dissenters in their midst are not worthy of ordinary human compassion.
Barnett and Rosenkranz are exactly right in their analogy to the death of Thurgood Marshall. There is no law school in the country where a conservative faculty member could say such things without getting hauled into the Dean’s office for a scolding, if not worse. Indeed, at most schools you’d probably end up in front of a Title IX officer.
Can you imagine what the Pellers of the law school academy are going to say when Clarence Thomas passes? The unhinged racism by these champions of social justice will be stunning.
We need a legal academy that looks like America.