Class Bias in Higher Education: Law School

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Class Bias in Higher Education

Discussion of class bias in higher education, particularly legal education.
By Jeffrey Harrison

Post Frequency: 8.9/day

Last Entry: November 13, 2009 at 21:14:00

Truth in Recruitment and Welfare for Professors

Posted on November 13, 2009
When I was in college, friends of mine got summer jobs selling encyclopedia. They first went through a training session that was astounding in the level of deception they were taught. They were actually "giving away" the books to "chosen" families. All those families had to do was buy the yearly supplement...

Stumbling on Shame

Posted on October 30, 2009
The details are not important, but this week I had a schadenfreude moment. A person I do not care for was in a awkward position that he would have a hard time explaining to himself except to wonder whether his status was as high as he things. In my office while smiling to myself -- only slightly -- I also realized that this feeling of happiness at his misfortune was not such a good thing...

Don Draper

Posted on October 21, 2009
If you watch Mad Men which is (or was, since I am not keen on the current season) you know that Roger described Don as someone he found in "night school." The class implications have been obvious for some time but this drove home the point even more. Don is a fish out of water and those around him hate it that he kicks their butts at every turn...

Too Polite?

Posted on October 13, 2009
Oft times in this blog I have discussed the ways collegiality, manners, and civility are used as weapons to protect those in power. Those are the folks who get to decide what is polite or discourteous and by using certain words -- uncollegial, offensive -- rally the rest of the elites...

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The Shame Gene

Posted on October 02, 2009
Sometimes I think what separates the elites from others is the shame gene. Maybe through some Darwinian process they simply excluded it. Those people who were capable of feeling shame were stampeded by those unable to feel it themselves. For example how else do you explain:1...

The Velvet Mob

Posted on October 01, 2009
For some reason a characteristic I share with a few friends is the tendency to befriend outcasts. Whether it was Leonard Doddington in elementary school or Anthony Galubo in middle school they were the kids the other kids made fun of. I sincerely hope they both grew up to be happy and their tormentors also finally felt some sense of remorse...

Political Correctness: College Sports as a Litmus Test

Posted on September 28, 2009
I and most others who use the term "politically correct" probably have different definitions. For me it is a default term that allows me to escape using "left" or liberal because the groups I am referring to are neither. It is more or less a way to capture the anti-intellectualism of some faculty for whom the agenda is more important than truth and legitimate scholarship...

Dear Dean Everydean

Posted on September 26, 2009
Dear Dean Everydean:You have asked what I will be able to teach next semester. I hope this clarifies things. I will be able to teach two sections of my seminar, Law and the Films of Christopher Walken. These are completely separate courses. One section will bring Mr...

Not Too Much of an Exaggeration

Posted on September 18, 2009
Dear Professor Elite:I have scheduled you for a 12 hour teaching load next semester. This is composed of 4 hours of contracts (Monday-Thurs at 10) and 3 hours of Business Associations (Wed-Fri at 1) in the Fall. In the Spring, you are scheduled to teach 3 hours of Agency and Partnership (Tues - Thurs at 2) and 2 hours of a Seminar in Advanced Business Associations (3-5 Monday)...

Greed and Confidence: "Bill Smith, who is at Harvard, . . . "

Posted on September 06, 2009
If there is an actual Bill Smith at Harvard, my apologies because this is not about you. In fact, even if there is a Bill Smith at Harvard, it is not about you. What it is about is the person who says to someone "I was talking to Bill Smith, who is at Harvard, and he says ...

Social Mobility and the Washington Monthly

Posted on September 02, 2009
As reported in the New York Times, Washington Monthly has published its rankings of Universities based on their contribution to social good. It is interesting the compare the social good rankings with the U.S. News and World Report rankings. One measure of social good is the contribution to social mobility and that is measured by students with Pell Grants...

Machine Graded Exams Again

Posted on August 24, 2009
I've written about multiple choice machine [not multiple choice with explanation] graded exams over on Moneylaw but not here on Classbais because I was not sure there was a class or entitlement factor involved. Now I am not so sure.First my view is that professors who give 100% or even more the 50% machine graded exams are shirking their teaching obligations...

Trailing Spouses

Posted on August 17, 2009
Sometime ago I wrote about the blatant class bias and self-referential aspects of the Sloan Foundation's study of how to increase job flexibility for academics. Yes, it was a little like studying ways to may Yao Ming taller.Another aspect of academics that reveals a huge class bias is the problem of the trailing spouse...

Class Bias Part 3: Replay

Posted on August 11, 2009
Then I got Mary pregnantand man that was all she wroteAnd for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coatWe went down to the courthouseand the judge put it all to restNo wedding day smiles no walk down the aisleNo flowers no wedding dressThe River, SpringsteenParts one and two of my discussion of class bias in law school hiring addressed the different perspective that economically disadvantaged people (e...

Atticus Say it Ain't So

Posted on August 09, 2009
I thought I was up on law and literature but evidently not. The latest New Yorker includes a bit of a deconstruction of Atticus Finch, the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird. If my memory serves me, at least one law professor, Monroe Freedman, is quoted. It seems that the honorable Atticus was only able to offer his moral lesson by strutting is sexism and class bias...

Class Bias Part 2: Replay

Posted on August 02, 2009
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV.And you think you're so clever and class less and free.But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see.A working class hero is something to be.Working Class Hero, John LennonIn part one of this three part series, I discussed the different perspective of those who were economically disadvantaged people...

Class Bias Part 1: Replay

Posted on July 30, 2009
Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on em Thats what the statue of bigotry says Your poor huddled masses, lets club em to death And get it over with and just dump em on the boulevard. Lou Reed, Dirty Blvd...

Madder Than Gates

Posted on July 25, 2009
Professor Gates got pretty mad about his run in the the police last week. I doubt he got as mad as I did. After a break in in my middle class neighborhood the police decided to question the usual suspects -- teen age boys (beer was taken). So with no adults at home my 17 year old was awakened by three police detectives standing in his bedroom...

Trout, Liposuction, and Foreign Programs

Posted on July 19, 2009
I am eating words right not because I am teaching in UF's summer program in Montpellier, France. Some readers my recall my criticism of these types of programs. In my defense my primary argument was that no new ones are needed especially in western Europe -- adult Disney World -- because there are more than enough to supply every student...

It Takes a Worried Man

Posted on July 02, 2009
Most law professors are worried people and worried people are not much in the sense of humor department. Crack a joke and the first reaction is "is this a joke? what does this really mean? is it OK to laugh? what are the political and social implications of laughing? If the humor is on the irreverent side you are better off saving your breath...

Velvet Hazing

Posted on June 15, 2009
This is not a ?walked 5 miles through the driving snow? story although it may seem that it is.At the mid level schools at which I have taught, life for untenured faculty has changed. At my first teaching job, I taught the summer before my first fall -- a first preparation crammed into a 7 week course...

Casebook Scam

Posted on June 09, 2009
I serve on two on two University committees, one of which deals with grievances and professional ethics. Surprising as it may seem, what I have learned makes me feel better about what goes on at the Law School. Here is one example of a scam that seems over the line...

Summer Rerun: The Matrix

Posted on June 04, 2009
I think everyone has seen the movie, The Matrix. If you have not, it portrays the battle between being "real" and feeling good. In effect, machines have taken over the world and cultivate humans as an energy source. They--the humans--actually grow in really yummy looking little pods...

Summer Rerun: Captive Newspapers

Posted on June 02, 2009
If you live in a college town you are likely to find your local newspaper complicit in the preservation of control of the University by the elites. The Gainesville Sun seems to be a good example. The Sun, despite open meetings and open records law appears to have little interest in examing the University of Florida and seems wary of any op-eders who challenge them to do so...

Hypocrisy Studies

Posted on May 23, 2009
Ken Oldfield, referred to below in connection with his book, Resilience, Queer Professors From the Working Class, is engaged in a long term project, "Hypocrisy Studies." An excerpt from his entry on Scalia, the man who equates silk purses with admission to elite schools, follows:"Antonin Scalia, the U...

And This Little Piggy Went to the Supreme Court

Posted on May 15, 2009
By now most people in legal education or practicing law have seen the article in the ABA Journal about Justice Scalia explaining the facts of Supreme Court and academic life to an American University student."?By and large,? Scalia said during the April 24 law school appearance, ?I?m going to be picking from the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into...

The "C" word and the "L" word

Posted on May 02, 2009
Running across this book review of The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn't made made me realize how dangerous the "C" word and the "L" word are. The C word is, of course, collegiality and the L word is leadership...

Gay and Working Class

Posted on May 01, 2009
There is an intriguing new book on the market. The title is Resilience: Queer Professors from the Working Class and as its title suggests it is devoted to the stories of gay and working class people who have made into the exclusive world of academia. The editors and contributors are are Kenneth Oldfield and Richard Johnson...

Randomly Distributing Babies

Posted on April 23, 2009
When babies are born hospitals take great pains to make sure they are identified so when the are taken to the nursery they are not mixed up and given to the wrong parents. I have often suggested that a better process is not to worry about the mix up. In fact, why not just randomly distribute them to the parents? What this means is that each newborn has an equal probability of being teamed up with affluent and intelligent parents...

"Pimp'n Out" the Students, Helping, or Both?

Posted on April 16, 2009
Many law schools have externship programs -- students work elsewhere in a law related jobs and receive credit. Schools divide on whether the externship must be in a non profit context. This question is, perhaps, more pressing, when the issue arises in the context of public schools...

Elitist Voting

Posted on April 01, 2009
Actually to be fair, maybe it is not just elitist but it is interesting nonetheless. I just return from a faculty meeting in which every proposal except one passed unanimously. The problem was that around where I was sitting, many people seemed to be opposed...

Upside Down World and Jeremy Bentham

Posted on March 24, 2009
Three things hit me the other day when I drove to Home Depot on a too hot for March afternoon. First there was the 35-40ish looking woman coming out of Domino's pizza with a stack of pizzas and getting into a rusted heap of a car. It was a delivery car and she was at least 8 months pregnant...

Class Priming

Posted on March 16, 2009
Priming is an interesting, mysterious process. For example, in one experiment subjects were asked to write a description of either soccer hooligans or professors. Afterward they played a game of trivial pursuit. Those asked to describe professors out performed those asked to describe hooligans...

The Thin Ivy Line

Posted on March 08, 2009
When I wrote about faculty gangs last week, I did not fully comprehend the sociology of faculties until talking to a friend's 10 year old. She told me of cliques, cruelty, gossip, and the type of piling on that I described last week in the context of faculties...

Faculty Gangs

Posted on March 01, 2009

Jim Calhoun and Law Professors

Posted on February 25, 2009
I'm a big sports fan. I even watch Mike and Mike with my sling box when away. Golic is beginning to wear on me, though. Recently I have following the Jim Calhoun "we bring in $12 million for the University" affair. This, as you know, is the explanation for and defense of his salary and that of every other big time college coach...

Don't Smile

Posted on February 13, 2009
I am not sure I agree but here comes another indicator of how class differences are manifested and, to some extent perpetuated. In a recent article Michael Kraus and Dacner Keltner describe different body language tendencies that are correlated with class...

Law Suit

Posted on February 09, 2009
Several readers have asked if I am going to blog about the pending law suit against UF and the Law School that Paul Caron has publicized.I really cannot. I have thankfully been out of the loop on virtually all of the details. This is a huge Law School and I doubt very seriously that one person's take would be accurate.

Privatizing Social Capital

Posted on February 02, 2009
A couple of years ago over on money law I wrote a blog on making nice and doing nothing -- a common trait of the elites. Now it occurs to me that it is a great example of capitalism only the capital is social.Let me provide some background. In the higher education contexts in which I have participated, there is always a subtle form of extortion...

Class Bias in Practice

Posted on February 01, 2009
The term "class bias" like many others has an idea or theory behind it but is not really brought home until you see it in practice as I have over the last few months. In the midst of my University's huge budget cuts, the Law School has avoided any cuts at all...

Phil Ochs, Limousine Liberals and Going Green

Posted on January 29, 2009
In a comment too rich to be relegated to a comment, Professor Eric Fink of Elon College, who has his own most excellent blog, reminds you -- not me because I never knew -- that Phil Ochs captured the notion of a liberal years ago with the observation that liberal means: "Ten degrees to the left of center in good times...

Liberal For You; Conservative for Me: Public Law School Financing

Posted on January 27, 2009
Those who study regulated industries know that regulatory bodies are less concerned with how much a utility spends than with how much is passed through to rate payers. This "above the line/below the line" idea applies in many, but not all, respects to higher education...

Whose Gravy Train is This?

Posted on January 21, 2009
Over on Moneylaw there is a terrific new post asking if the gravy train is over for law professors. I doubt it because so many law professors are blinded their sense of self importance and trained to be successful advocates especially when they are their own clients as so many are everyday...

The Law School Football Team

Posted on January 01, 2009
From time to time a law professor at another school writes to me rather than comment on a post. Here is part of an email from what I assumed to be a first or second law professor. He or she had just come from an appointments meeting at which a number of candidates were discussed...

Outliers, Class and Law Professors

Posted on December 17, 2008
Malcolm Gladwell's newest book, a href="http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017922/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8amp;s=booksamp;qid=1229516695amp;sr=1-1"Outliers,/a is an interesting read. It is devoted to the reasons some people succeed and some don't...

Over Parented (or is it Parenting) Law Professors

Posted on December 05, 2008
There was an extended book review/ article in the New Yorker a few weeks ago about over parenting and how it can result in a fairly inept adult. Over parenting, if you unfamiliar with the term, is the largely upper middle class tendency toward making sure a child never experiences a sense of not succeeding...

Are Law Schools Recession Proof?

Posted on December 03, 2008
The pecking order at law schools is pretty well set. First are the tenured professions then the tenure track but yet to be tenured. Next, oddly enough are the yet to be hired untenured people. After that are year to year, untenured people who typically teach skills courses...

The Common Thread

Posted on November 20, 2008
One debate that I have each year (and lose) concerns the fascination law school hiring committees have with candidates with elite credentials. Schools at the level of mine and lower only rarely attract candidates who graduated from top ranked schools at the top of their classes...

O'Conner and Nader, Eight Years Later

Posted on November 05, 2008
I am not sure it is possible to have less respect for former Justice O'Connor than I do. If the newspaper reports are right she was stunned that her retirement might be delayed by a Gore victory. Think of the sense on entitlement to think you should determine who replaces you...

Germany? 1930s?

Posted on October 28, 2008
It is sinister. Dark skies and a stormy ocean. An announcer warning against a nation in hard times turning to (or is that overtaken by) an unknown leader who has experienced a "quick rise to power." "Rise to power" -- what a frightening and evocative phrase...

Support for the Sarah Voters

Posted on October 23, 2008
Today I voted in Florida. The act of voting here increases the probability that your vote will countBut to the topic of this post:No I do not support her. I have already stated that to me Sarah Palin is like 10,000 finger nails scraping along a black broad or 1000 cars with mega basses tuned up to brain damage level surrounding me at a stop light...

Is the Dachshund a Working Class Dog?

Posted on October 15, 2008
I always thought so. I mean how could any self respecting elitist own a dachshund when he or she could have a golden retriever. Or maybe the working class dog is really a tiny poodle.Now I have to rethink the dachshund after reading this Don Burness Poem from Brutal as All Olympics Are...

Bitter Hearts: Stephen Crane and Donald Burness

Posted on October 09, 2008
One of my favorite poems is by Stephen Crane:The Heart by Stephen Crane In the desertI saw a creature, naked, bestial,Who, squatting upon the ground,Held his heart in his hands,And ate of it. I said, ?Is it good, friend???It is bitter - bitter,? he answered;?But I like itBecause it is bitter,And because it is my heart...

Are One Chance Students the Victims of Unlimited Chance Professors?

Posted on September 29, 2008
In the last two posts I presented excerpts from The Disadvantages of An Elite Education by William Deresiewicz.Perhaps the most powerful observation from that article follows:" . . . [T]he way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out...

Does and Elite Education Produce Anti Intellectuals

Posted on September 26, 2008
In my previous post I quoted the initial two paragraphs of The Disadvantages of an Elite Education by William Deresiewicz. Maybe the most important passage of that article for those in legal education comes near the end."But if you?re afraid to fail, you?re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual...

The Disadvantages of the Elite

Posted on September 25, 2008
The following two paragraphs are taken from The Disadvantages of An Elite Education by William Deresiewicz. It is from the Summer 08 issue of American Scholar.Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race...

The Clarence Palin Problem

Posted on September 22, 2008
One of the most discouraging things I have experienced in my profession was the realization that "diversity" did not really mean diversity. Several years ago a recruiting committee of which I was Chair made what is to my mind the most extreme effort ever made to hire diversity candidates...

Is Sarah Palin Uppity?

Posted on September 19, 2008
"Uppity" is a word I have never heard used except in the context of discussions about the word "uppity." I see in the press that it is used from time to time to describe people who are asking for greater respect and deference than they somehow deserve...

Sarah Palin and O.J. Simpson

Posted on September 12, 2008
I am not sure I have seen anything like the Sarah Palin phenomenon since O.J. Simpson. Most of you are old enough to recall that the evidence against OJ was overwhelming. Whether you though he "should" be found guilty as opposed to whether he was guilty seemed largely a function of race...

What to do about Levi Johnston?

Posted on September 08, 2008
When it was revealed that Sarah Palin's daughter was pregnant, I, like many parent did not jump to condemn mother or daughter but thought "there but for the grace of God . . . ." I don't have daughters but it's the same thing when you hear of a son who has been caught drinking underage or smoking dope or far worse things...

What To Do About Sarah Palin

Posted on September 04, 2008
A colleague who is a regular reader came by my office today. "Jeff," he said, "I cannot believe some of the things people are saying about Sarah Palin. You and I both know that if she only had a degree from Harvard or Yale, most of that criticism would go away...

Teach Your Children Well

Posted on August 29, 2008
What do you teach your children to best equip them for the world? You might start with work hard, be honest, do not brag. Isn't it amazing what bad advice this can be. Take for example the world of legal education. There are many hard workers here, but in a "no good deed goes unpunished way," what their hard work becomes is a way for others to free ride...

Class Difference: Part 3, Replay from 2006

Posted on August 27, 2008
Then I got Mary pregnantand man that was all she wroteAnd for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coatWe went down to the courthouseand the judge put it all to restNo wedding day smiles no walk down the aisleNo flowers no wedding dressThe River, SpringsteenParts one and two of my discussion of class bias in law school hiring addressed the different perspective that economically disadvantaged people (e...

Class Differences: Part 2, Replay

Posted on August 26, 2008
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV.And you think you're so clever and class less and free.But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see.A working class hero is something to be.Working Class Hero, John LennonIn part one of this three part series, I discussed the different perspective of those who were economically disadvantaged people...

Class Differences: Part 1; A Replay From Two Years Ago

Posted on August 24, 2008
Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on em Thats what the statue of bigotry says Your poor huddled masses, lets club em to death And get it over with and just dump em on the boulevard. Lou Reed, Dirty Blvd...

Generosity and Counter-Preferential Choice

Posted on August 20, 2008
A couple of things came to my attention today from completely independent sources that appear to me to be connected. The first is a short article in the August16th issue of The Economist about experiments connecting physical contact in the form of massages with generosity...

Behave for Success

Posted on August 14, 2008
It's not an official term but what I use to describe those with working class backgrounds who end up in the world of academics is "socioeconomic displacement." In other words, your parents did not go to college, you are the first in the family to do so and your natural career path might be middle management somewhere...

Two Perspectives

Posted on August 09, 2008
Recently a perceptive reader wrote the following comment:"Doesn't the assertion the law professors are always looking for an order to follow contradict the notion that they always look out for themselves? The posts preceding this one talk about Professors teaching only what they want and not what is needed...

Communication and Class

Posted on August 02, 2008
I hope the handful of people who read this blog do so with a critical outlook. If I've got something wrong, I am interested in hearing why. It is true that if you send a mindless or insulting comment I will not "print" it but anything substantive and on point is welcome...

Sadly, Obama

Posted on July 31, 2008
Clearly, whether ingrained or affected, Obama is an elitist. To be sure he is the candidate of the elitists. This has been no secret but the Times article (July 30) about his time as a law professor reveals things that perhaps only a law professor can appreciate...

The No Shame Zone and Shambotomies

Posted on July 25, 2008
The role shame plays in the lives of some people and not in the lives of others hit me like a love bug hits an interstate windshield. I am sure that shame is the right word. Consider the dictionary definition, "the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, ridiculous, done by oneself or anothers...

Are All Elites Company Men?

Posted on July 24, 2008
One thing that has always seemed odd to me is the quickness with which people begin to identify with "the man" Go to a department store where the clerk is making $10 and hour and say anything critical about the store and most of the time the clerk will take it personally...

More on White People

Posted on July 21, 2008
No doubt most people reading this will be familiar with the Stuff White People Like blog by Christian Lander. It's quite funny and now that the books is out it is getting more national press in the form of reviews. If you've read the blog you know it was not really about white people but, according to the author, "The Stuff is more about class than race...

Entitlement and Teaching Schedules

Posted on July 20, 2008
At most schools (and perhaps other places) teaching loads are, in large part, allocated -- except with respect to the instances in which student needs are observed -- on the bases of sense of entitlement, level of moral development, and opportunity costs associated with time spent badgering...

Did the Elites Invent Tenure?

Posted on July 17, 2008
I do not know but it looks like it. Elites are very good at figuring out ways to redistribute income from those less affluent to themselves. Think about it. Tenure involves a pre commitment in which (for public schools) taxpayers through their agents (faculty) say "No matter what you do over the next 20-50 years, I want to keep employing you...

No Pain Economies

Posted on July 13, 2008
Many people do not realize that budget cuts in higher education to do not mean greater economies and care in how money is spent. All it means is that the state itself is not forking over the money. If you can get the money elsewhere there is little self-interest-based reason to cut spending or tighten your belt...

The Entitlement Test

Posted on July 09, 2008
There a good test for which law faculty have a sense of entitlement and should be sent on their way and which one do not. I am not sure at all that the distinction fall along class lines but there are many reasons it could.Suppose you are teaching international dance law (This is fictional with respect to my own school a sfar a I know) and you consistently draw 5 students...

No Working People Allowed in Law School

Posted on July 08, 2008
If you have not seen it, please read the post by Nancy Rapoport on the latest USN&WR fuss. Briefly here is the issue. If USN&WR includes the data (GPA & LSAT) of part time (often night) students in their rankings, will schools be more likely to eliminate or not institute these programs...

Graduate School Credit

Posted on July 05, 2008
My sense is that on most campuses, law schools are not regarded a quite up to par as far as other graduate programs. If true it is unfortunate. As someone who has done both -- law school and graduate school -- I feel that law students work harder. Plus, given the market for Ph...

Rio Lisboa and Law Faculties

Posted on July 02, 2008
I am not sure how to describe Rio Lisboa because what do you call a bakery, deli, grocery store, juice bar, snack bar, and outdoor caf� that never closes on a street in the Leblon section of Rio. What?s great about the RL is the constant feel of action, movement and goodwill...

Law Schools Should be Juice Bars

Posted on June 29, 2008
One of my favorite things in Rio is the juice bars. This photo is of my personal favorite. They are on virtually every corner. Most have not just juice but what I would call diner food. Actually, I am not sure I ever ate in a diner but it is what I imagine diner food to be...

The Favela Tour

Posted on June 07, 2008
Favelas are the shanty towns throughout Brazil with Rio having perhaps the most well know. If you have seen Children of God you understand what a favela is. On the tourist maps of Rio there are huge areas simply labeled "favela." No streets are indicated...

Class in Cases

Posted on May 28, 2008
I have written here and elsewhere about the pervasive impact of class on virtually everything from hiring to recruitment to the impact on minorities and women. Miriam Cherry in an insightful article discusses class in well-know contracts cases. 28 Pace L...

Watermelon

Posted on May 24, 2008
One of the most pleasant lunches I recall was with Chesterfield Smith. He spoke of attending law school for a semester and the returning to Bartow, Florida to pick watermelons in order to return to Law School.I wonder how many of today's law students have summer time experiences that are as likely to be as important in shaping their perspective for years to come or a life time...

Sensitivity Training and Non Writers

Posted on May 15, 2008
Over on Prawfsblawg, Geoffrey Rapp puts non writers on the couch in order to understand why they do not write. I think he has it pretty much right for why they do not write and in a sense I want to say thank God they do not because 7200 articles a year is enough...

Class and Evaluations

Posted on May 09, 2008
Deborah Merritt has written a very interesting article about student teaching evaluations. Deborah J. Merritt BIAS, THE BRAIN, AND STUDENT EVALUATIONS OF TEACHING 82 St. John?s L. Rev. 235. I have commented on it over on Moneylaw. An element of the article I did not discuss there deals with the impact of class on evaluations...

The Real Class Bias

Posted on May 03, 2008
I have often wondered about the origins of public law schools. I have attempted to do a little reading but other things got in the way.But think about it. Do you suppose public law schools were started so the cost of legal education would go down and the number of lawyers would increase and the masses could then afford legal services?There are so many holes in that theory it?s hard to know where to begin...

Yale Recall

Posted on April 27, 2008
I guess by now most have seen or read the empirical study byRoyce de Rohan Barondes showing that the higher the percentage of Yale grad clerks a judge has the higher the likelihood that a decision by the judge will run into trouble on appeal. The correlation between other elite clerks and appellate problems is equivocal...

Do'in the Legal Scholarship Shuffle

Posted on April 26, 2008
As I have noted before sometime in the mid to late eighties or early 90s legal scholarship took a shift to a race for lines on resumes. In think it roughly coincides with the ratings chase and the full development of symposia issues. I think it was June 17, 1991 but that could be off a day or two...

Are You What You Teach?

Posted on April 23, 2008
This is rank speculation based on very few observations but, do people spend their lives going against type: For example:1. I have known a few people who are psychologists or psychiatrists. The number of them who are a bit wacky or have wacky people in their families seems higher than other people I know...

Noblesse Non Oblige

Posted on April 21, 2008
I am not sure what to think about Noblesse oblige. I guess if there is nobility, members should do something to help others. Around law schools the message somehow has been reinterpreted to mean Noblesse Non Oblige. For example, a law professor pipes up and complains that many students who want to take a course can not get in...

The Faculty Meeting Bouncer

Posted on April 20, 2008
When I was an economist I attended my first faculty meeting. After about 20 minutes of inane discussion about the exact wording of a course description I felt myself getting angry. I actually thought highly educated people were above petty speech making...

Introducing myself

Posted on April 16, 2008
Jeff has been kind enough, or careless enough, to invite me to contribute to Class Bias in Higher Education. When I started my own blog a few months ago, I called it Lucky Jim, J.D. in homage to my favorite comic novel. Lucky Jim recounts the misadventures of Jim Dixon, a working class lad who finds himself navigating, without noticeable aplomb, the class-bound currents of academia...

Wecome Lucky Jim!

Posted on April 16, 2008
I am very happy to announce that Lucky Jim has accepted an invitation to be a contributor to classbias. I look forward to his posts.

Even More Careful

Posted on April 15, 2008
One theme of this blog has been how elites want you to believe that there is give and take in the world and that life is a series of negotiations as in "we can work it out." It is a strange negotiation because they actually rarely negotiate in the sense of giving anything up...

Being Careful

Posted on April 13, 2008
Close to the vest: I am not sure of the origins of this phrase but for me it means the tendency of people to disclose as little as possible and to commit to an identifiable position as infrequently as possible. These are two different types of behavior that are common to law professors and elitists generally...

Haves and Have Nots: Law School Classes

Posted on April 09, 2008
At law schools there tend to be three divisions. One is between faculty and staff. And then there is the tenure track/non tenure track faculty division. Finally the high paid and low paid tenure track people. This last division is not necessarily between tenured and untenured people...

Replay: In Praise of Incivility

Posted on April 06, 2008
Let?s face facts. Most law faculties are clubs. Once you?re in, it?s for life and as a tenured colleague on my faculty recently told an untenured colleague, ?it?s not enough to be colleagues, you really need to at least act like you are a friend.? (Civility-speak for "kiss butt kid or you are out of here...

Volunteers Yet Again

Posted on April 05, 2008
One of the more fascination ploys of the upper classes is the volunteer ?move.? That is, no matter how much they want something, when they get it, it was a result of their charitable instincts. Once I described asking a committee of law professors in a meeting who ?wanted? to go to a out of town meeting...

Ways to be a Big Shot

Posted on April 01, 2008
I guess this is for new law professors because all the veterans know how to frame things to may themselves look more important. So1. The third level law journal at Harvard has agreed to publish your article: From here after you refer to this as "My article at Harvard...

Your Poor Baby!!

Posted on March 29, 2008
Yes, I practically weeping. And what about? It's those working conditions for Law Professors. No I am not talking about the secretaries who come to work everyday at 8 and leave at 5 and must use sick leave to take a sick child to the doctor. I am talking about law professors who are so very important that their teaching schedules have to be just so or perhaps they "just cannot take it...

What's a Dean To Do?

Posted on March 22, 2008
When I first started writing for Moneylaw and for this blog I was very hard on deans. In part as a result of comments I have softened my view and come to realize what a pickle deans are in.I am not thinking here about a top 10 or 15 school but a School ranked lower, let?s say 50th with little hope of moving to the 30s and unlikely to drop to the 60s...

Privileged Hats

Posted on March 08, 2008
As a law professor, one of the many things I cannot figure out is whether we are management, workers, or professionals. It seems we are all three. Supposedly in the context of governance we determine rules about the operation of a law school. In this role we make decisions ranging from courses offered to our own work loads...

T.O., Law School Stars, and the Team

Posted on March 03, 2008
Over on Moneylaw, Jim Chen has noted the importance of playing for the team as opposed to oneself. He is writing about the Louisville basketball team but suggests the question can be applied to other university units. No doubt, he is thinking about law schools...

Dylan: Is there A Way Out Of Here

Posted on February 28, 2008
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."B. DylanNo, I do not mean UF where I teach and have what I think is the second best job in the world -- reading, writing and talking about interesting things...

The Dean Thing

Posted on February 22, 2008
I have from time to time written about law school deaning as have Jim Chen and Nancy Rapoport over on moneylaw. When they do it is with a perspective I cannot have. There are things I just do not ?get.? In fact, I have four questions and an observation...

"I am SO mad" and Efficiency

Posted on February 20, 2008
That line appears in a children's book I must have read to my own kids a few thousand times. Like every other parent I know I would try to vary it. Sometimes I read the title, author and all publication information including the ISBN. Other times I just added things like "I am so mad [I just got my hankie caught in a weasel's woofer...

Doing Chen Ups

Posted on February 16, 2008
Most people reading this blog get here via Moneylaw. If you have not read Jim Chen's latest post over there please do. There are two aspects of Jim's post that are important. One is his general message. As a former construction laboror and someone who pays attention to the background of his colleagues, I agree that you cannot fully appreciate a law teaching job and treat it as the privilege it is unless you have worked at the other end of the spectrum...

The Tenured Life, Part 5: Complacency and Blaming the Students

Posted on February 12, 2008
One thing the tenure life breeds is complacency. There is one test that determines most of the decisions that may people make: what does this mean for me?In two articles by Robert Lloyd, both of which are now over ten years old, he captures the idea of going with the flow...

The Tenured Life, Part 4: Anti-intellectualism

Posted on February 05, 2008
As discussed so far, the the tenure life can mean rewards for poor teaching, less writing, and small ideas. It aslo leads to anti intellectualism. What do I mean by anti intellectual or intellectual? I have no idea if this is an official definition but for me it means that all ideas are explored, all questions asked, and the answers respected...

The Tenured Life, Part 3: Wasting It

Posted on January 30, 2008
In the last post on this topic I discussed faculty who fake it while untenured and run out of steam shortly thereafter. It is a huge cost to the public in two ways. First is being locked into paying a lifetime annuity with a low return. The other is the opportunity cost...

The Tenured Life, Part 2: Prodigal writing

Posted on January 25, 2008
In the last post I described how poor teaching is tolerated in the tenured life and how there are incentives not to be an effective teacher. Scholarship is a little different. I am already on record saying that the scholarship requirement for law professors is probably overdone...

The Tenured Life, Part 1: Is Bad Good?

Posted on January 21, 2008
Once a person hired to teach at a law school, life time employment is nearly assured. With few exceptions, everyone who makes an effort gets tenure. The only people who do not are those who have not made nice and who have utterly failed in the scholarship department...

The Unbearable Lightness of Utility and Ranking

Posted on January 15, 2008
We are all familiar with experiments in which subjects cannot tell the difference between a high priced wine and and low priced one. Now comes a study showing that knowing the price ahead of time affects the ranking. Not surprisingly, they rank a wine as better if it is more expensive...

Law Professors Do It Slower (and Later)

Posted on January 09, 2008
I was just trying to figure out if there is a better example of an elitist sense of entitlement than the propensity of law professors not to grade exams within a reasonable time. In most instances the entire grade is based on one final exam. I have yet to meet a student who was not anxious to find out the result of four months of effort...

Are Elites Anti Intellectual?

Posted on January 09, 2008
Are elites anti-intellectual? I will admit that this view may be a bit of a reach and involves drawing a couple of perhaps unrelated ideas together. I do not think there is any serious debate that legal education is controlled by the privileged. And clearly there is no question that law professors view themselves as liberals...

No Misery Among the Elites

Posted on January 06, 2008
A number of law school related blogs, including Moneylaw, have addressed the idea that law professors are miserable. This does not mean miserable people ? which a fair number may be ? but that law professors are unhappy. In typical idle talk fashion the idea that they are unhappy seems to have been hatched in a manner similar to office hall gossip...

More Class Confessions

Posted on December 31, 2007
Dear Jeff;I can top anything anyone has listed so far. I was getting ready for the hiring convention. I did not own a suit and had not owned one for years. I can give you details about how that happens but it's not so important. I could afford one but just did not ever need one...

Class Moments from Readers' Email

Posted on December 25, 2007
1. I was in 8th grade Algebra. The teacher was using an example that involved allocating a fixed amount of money to buy several items. In the course of it, she says, ?Now if you were buying good shoes, you would never go to Sid?s.? [Sid?s was the local discount shoe store...

1970 - 2005 -- Class Consciousness

Posted on December 19, 2007
I am not surprised anymore about class differences but I am surprised by the lack of sensitivity to class differences especially among the privileged. One of my first real experiences with this goes back to being an undergraduate in the late 60s. Periodically there would be meetings of all sorts of leftish, anti-war types...

Just Wondering About None of the Above

Posted on December 13, 2007
Over on Moneylaw I have posted my annual objection to multiple choice machine graded exams (MCMG) for law students. To me it is a sign of laziness. And, since it denies the students the opportunity to communicate that they know law is imprecise, fuzzy, and inconsistent, it is also demonstrates a disregard for students...

The Informal World of Non Elites

Posted on December 09, 2007
A friend suggested to me that class bias is so powerful that it never really wears off. What he meant was that even if a non elite cracks through, somehow gets a law teaching job, and then tenure, many things remain the same. The clique of the elites is never open to the non elites...

Playing the "Fairness" Card and Rawls

Posted on November 28, 2007
Recently, in a comment, I was accused of not being fair. It made me realize how specialized a sense of unfairness can be. I have no idea who wrote the comment and the identity is not important because I am sure a narrowly focused sense of fairness is something we all possess...

Answer from Harvard Professor

Posted on November 26, 2007
Those of you who read the immediately preceding post know that I wrote and asked a Harvard Prof about an empirically verifiable statement made with respect to a candidate. The statement was that the candidate had 28 call backs within a few days of the recuiting convention...

Letter to a Harvard Reference

Posted on November 24, 2007
Dear Professor . . . :I have not communicated about this until the recruiting effort in connection with [Doe] was completed because I did not want to interfere in the process. What follows is an effort to transcribe a telephone interview with you. The comments are what one expects these days except for the claim of 28 call backs within 3 days...

Moms, Dads, and Deans in the World of Elites

Posted on November 23, 2007
I have been pretty critical of deans in my blogs and I may have been unfair. My sample is small. I have only worked closely enough with 8 deans to have any standing with respect to criticism. In that 8, I have seen only one dean who tempted to reshape the work ethic of the faculty...

Hiring Bias and Public Legal Education

Posted on November 15, 2007
Elites tend to view themselves as ends rather than means to an end. This is especially the case when it comes to law teaching. Unless public legal education is viewed as a huge and ill-conceived method of redistributing income from lower and middle income groups to relatively higher income groups, its only purpose can be to enhance public welfare...

Not as Much as You Think

Posted on November 11, 2007
In my previous post I asked the question ?Do Elites Think.? I asked facetiously knowing that they do think, at least some. The point I was making is that they are enamored of institutional authority -- Harvard is automatically better than Florida and the recommendation of a Harvard professor more reliable than a Florida professor...

Do Elites Think?

Posted on November 08, 2007
Jake: Hi, do you want to talk about that issue some more? Jeff: Yes, right now I am trying to find some distinction between being content and being happy. Jake: As it turns out, I was just talking to some people at Harvard about that. Jeff: Why are you telling me they are from Harvard? (Long Pause) Jake: I am not sure what you mean...

The Fall Election: News for Law Students and Alums

Posted on November 02, 2007
Each fall an election is held. It?s an unusual election in that it involves actual votes and then marketplace ?votes.? In both cases, the voters are law professors and the election is held to determine which people will become law professors.In the vast majority of instances the voters vote against their own students...

'Nuf Said

Posted on November 01, 2007
Based on data provided to the faculty and my far from always accurate calculations, The University of Florida hiring committee interviewed 31 people in Washington. Here are their law schools:Harvard ? 8Yale -7 Columbia ? 4NYU - 2Stanford -2Chicago -2Vand...

And the Campus Visits Go To . . .

Posted on October 30, 2007
First out of the box for a campus visit is -- do you want to guess? -- You got it. Princeton/Harvard. I don't want to be too quick to be negative. After all maybe this is a person with a story to tell. Overcoming barriers, a zillion dollars of student loans...

Dancing the Minuet

Posted on October 30, 2007
Here is a post I put on Concurring Opinions during my one month guest stint. It lists what makes for an ideal law school and what does not. When I wrote it I did not think in terms of class bias implications. Then I thought it is actually all about class bias because to the extent a school is not like the ideal school it means there is a hubris often found among those with a sense of entitement...