"Or the Stalinist interrogator Gletkin in Arthur Koestler’s 1940 novel 'Darkness at Noon'? If so, would UIC’s unconscious emulators be discomfited by the resemblance? Unlikely. Today, bureaucrats parasitic off academia’s scholarly mission outnumber actual scholars. These threat-discerners, diversity-planners, bias-detectors, sensitivity-promoters, sustainability-guarantors and other beneficiaries of today’s multibillion-dollar social justice industry are doing well during the nation’s supposed apocalypse."
George Will condemns the authorities at the University of Illinois at Chicago for their treatment of lawprof Jason Kilborn after he gave a civil procedure exam with a fact pattern about a lawsuit brought by a black woman against an employer whose managers had called her — and this is how it was written on the exam — a “n_____” and a “b_____.”
Here's Will's column: "Even by today’s standard of campus cowardice and conformity, this repulsive episode is noteworthy" (WaPo).
For details about the what UI did to Kilborn, here's the complaint in his lawsuit against the university. You can see all the measures the university took and also the serious difficulty over Kilborn's statement that the dean might have thought that Kilborn would "become homicidal" if he saw the student petition criticizing him about the exam.
Posts
58 comments:
words lead to thoughts and thoughts lead to thoughtcrime
thoughtcrime MUST BE stopped! thoughtcrime is doubleplusungood!
The Obama racism flurry continues in his third term by proxy. This nonsense has set race relations back 50 years and I see no sign that it will improve. As cities descend into chaos, who do you think normal people will blame for this ?
If I ever need legal representation because my employer has created a hostile work environment or discriminated against me, I do not want a lawyer who melts down over a question on an exam. If I am taken to the ER with a bleeding wound, I do not want a doctor or a nurse who faints at the site of blood.
We each have our own strengths. There are some great surgeons who fainted the first time they observed surgery. They didn't quit and they didn't demand that surgery be removed from the curriculum. They learned to deal with their feelings and exert the self control needed to do the task. Law students who cannot manage a test question about a difficult topic must either toughen up so they can effectively serve their clients, or recognize that they are just not cut out to be lawyers and find another career.
A bit of a tangent:
Do we know if the "other managers" (mentioned in the complaint) in this exam hypothetical were women? Black women?
Or do we just assume they were white males? Sounds like some perverse/reverse structural racism to assume the "other managers" are white males.
Administrators need to justify their salaries. Ruining the lives of faculty and students, and wrecking the intellectual life of the university, is how they do it. After a string of successes and great praise, they come to realize that this is, indeed, what they are being paid to do.
As with my comment on the Rogan thread, this is best understood as authoritarian tyrants twisting facts to suit their goals.
Discuss it with anyone who grew up in such a regime, see how they look at it.
Until more people learn to recognize this fact pattern for what it is, instead of getting lost in superfluous details about laws and evidence and procedure, we will continue to watch people who hate everything America stood for dismantle it from the inside.
Appalling.
If for no other reason than self-interest, (though one would wish for more noble motives), I hope the professor's colleagues will understand the threat to their own job security and academic freedom (sic) made clear by these actions, and that they will stand by him and issue their own protests to the institution.
Well one must understand that this is Bill Ayers University.
I am glad I am long past applying for jobs with this school on my CV. But at least I graduated before they gave Bill the job and the power. GI Bill good to me.
What is amazing is that these students want to be lawyers. What if they actually hear those words during a hearing? Will they faint, break out in a cold sweat, start crying? These students are adolescents, not adults. Any law firm wanting to hire should get a list of these students' names and avoid them like the plague
He's still working? Will dropped off the face of the earth years ago. Even among the NeverTrumpers, one never heard from him.
George Will's columns are always fun, even when the subject is serious. Today I learned a new word: "Kafkaesque."
Franz Kafka's literature is characterized by nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority. Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.
So that is the University’s new Uber Marxist tyranny at work. Thought police rule there, but much worse, the thought police have taken over the USA’s Military Officers.
Obama won.
Here’s the interesting point. The exam was in civil procedure, not employment law. So, why was it necessary for the professor to include the insulting, racist language over which the employee was considering a lawsuit? I assume that Professor Kilborn was trying to make the plaintiff’s case seem extremely appealing on the merits, while other facts would suggest civil procedure weaknesses in the case (e.g., venue, statute of limitations, federal jurisdiction, etc.) . That’s how I write law school exams, to try to get students to divorce their emotional response to the facts from their legal analysis. It’s shocking that the Dean either didn’t understand this or dismissed it as unimportant.
Shut up, George. You voted for this.
I used this UIC Law prof’s experience in my comment to the Nebraska Supreme Court about a proposed new lawyer discipline rule.
Perhaps Kilborn should have started looking for a new job when the university trustees changed the name of his law school because the greatest chief Justice was a slave owner.
It seems rather silly to ask students to take such a quaint view of civil procedure.
Can George Will just retire or die? His feeble attempts to pushback against the Left constrast so poorly with his enthusiatic hatred of Trump and his voters. If all Will wants to do is POINT THINGS OUT, who cares?
An attack on Judicial power by Will would be interesting. Or maybe an attack on the Law Schools brainwashing everyone in Leftism and the need for reform would also be something new for Will.
Instead its just "Wow, just wow. Look at how unreasonable they are" But then Will has been a bowtied fake for 25 years.
This is just part of the Human Resources revolution.
A bunch of pointless people who can't produce something people want but desperately need to be in control.
They gravitate towards this kind of job. They are destroyers. They need to be shipped one way to China.
And it is hilarious that George Will wrote this. He supported the regime that installed it.
"If so, would UIC’s unconscious emulators be discomfited by the resemblance? Unlikely."
Right. This is why Willian hand-wringing, and Althousian good-faith questioning, in other contexts is so beside the point. Prog inquisitors like what they are doing. The more eggs broken, the tastier the omelette. Emulation has been their MO since 1789.
"Even by today’s standard of campus cowardice and conformity, this repulsive episode is noteworthy"
Indeed. And credit to Althouse for noticing along with Will. But it will only stop when the Althouses and Wills of America band together with us deplorables to stop it, once and for all. That will mean compromising their sensibilities in other areas, about other people. As long as they are not willing to do that, the inquisitors will keep doing their thing, and the social justice industry will flourish.
Ah bringing the real world to life in a law school hypothetical. After a lifetime of practicing law I can tell you (and those young yet to be lawyers) that hypothetical is a day at the beach compared to some things they might see in the course of their practice.
A sludge of ignorance and cowardice oozes so constantly through today’s campuses that institutions acquire immunity through recidivism: Progressivism’s totalitarian temptation is too commonplace to be newsworthy. Academia’s vindictive intolerance has become humdrum.
Will's prose style is the sludge. Barthelme notices it in the pop form but not in the academic form, which nevertheless includes itself in his description:
You know, Klipshorn was right I think when he spoke of the `blanketing' effect of ordinary language, referring, as I recall, to the part that sort of, you know, `fills in' between the other parts. That part, the `filling' you might say, of which the expression `you might say' is a good example, is to me the most interesting part, and of course it might also be called the `stuffing' I suppose, and there is probably also, in addition, some other word that would do as well, to describe it, or maybe a number of them. But the quality this `stuffing' has, that the other parts of verbality do not have, is two-parted, perhaps: (1) and `endless' quality and (2) a `sludge' quality. Of course that is possibly two qualities but I prefer to think of them as different aspects of a single quality, if you can think that way. The `endless' aspect of `stuffing' is that it goes on and on, in many different forms, and in fact our exchanges are in large measure composed of it, in larger measure even, perhaps, than they are composed of that which is not `stuffing.' The `sludge' quality is the *heaviness* that this `stuff' has, similar to the heavier motor oils, a kind of downward pull but still fluid, if you follow me, and I can't help thinking that this downwardness is valuable, although it's hard to say how, right at the moment. So, summing up, there is a relation between what I have been saying and what we're doing here at the plant with these plastic buffalo humps. Now you're probably familiar with the fact that the per-capita production of trash in this country is up from 2.75 pounds per day in 1920 to 4.5 pounds per day in 1965, the last year for which we have figures, and is increasing at the rate of about four percent per year. Now that rate will probably go up, because it's *been* going up, and I hazard that we may very well soon reach a point where it's 100 percent, right? And there can no longer be any question of `disposing' of it, because it's all there is, and we will simply have to learn how to `dig' it--that's slang, but peculiarly appropriate here. So that's why we're in humps, right now, more really from a philosophical point of view than because we find them a great moneymaker. They are `trash,' and what in fact could be more useless and trashlike? It's that we want to be on the leading edge of this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that's why we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash phenomenon. And it's certainly been a pleasure showing you around the plant this afternoon, and meeting you, and talking to you about these things, which are really more important, I believe, than people tend to think. Would you like a cold Coke from the Coke machine now, before you go?
- Barthelme, Snow White
This was just another example of kangaroo court proceedings not uncommon at institutions of higher education that are administered by progressive apparatchiks too uneducated to understand the adjective “Kafkaesque.”
Kafka was a religious humorist, as Thomas Mann said. Will fails to see the humor, which is a major problem. The woke are serious about nothing and essentially ridiculous. Dignified man slips on banana peel.
Or law meets banana peel.
Kilburn's mistake was sending a note of regret. His response should have been to suck it up and stop being a class of whining female dogs. He should have told the class that they are expected to have stamina of battle steel, not toilet paper. Then tell the dean that if he is prepared to file a civil rights lawsuit against UIC and the dean personally if UIC pursues the matter further.
"What is amazing is that these students want to be lawyers. What if they actually hear those words during a hearing?"
But, how many students really protested or were upset? My reading of this is of egregious overreaction by the school administration, trying so hard to assuage the objections of one or two or a few students that they reveal their own inability to use any but a blunt hammer to address a trifling matter.
I wonder what would happen to a professor who showed his class the classic film, "Bambi Meets Godzilla."
He did file a lawsuit.
"Kafka was a religious humorist, as Thomas Mann said. Will fails to see the humor, which is a major problem. The woke are serious about nothing and essentially ridiculous. Dignified man slips on banana peel."
Well said. It strikes me that Buster Keaton would have been an ideal actor to portray Josef K., the protagonist of THE TRIAL or, possibly, K., the protagonist of THE CASTLE, which I have not yet read. (I have read THE TRIAL twice, and AMERIKA once, and a smattering of his stories).
So, why was it necessary for the professor to include the insulting, racist language over which the employee was considering a lawsuit?
He did not use racist language. He referred to racist language, but did not write it out. Are you afraid that woke law students are too sheltered to even deal with such concepts?
As a UIC graduate, I noticed that as the school started losing its 1970's liberal professors to retirement and more prestigious schools, it hired Marxists in their place. Back in the 60's there were always Marxist contingents (e.g., the Spartacus League) at UIC. They were patient and waited for their opportunity to take over the school.
It might be better to shield these fragile individuals from the sharp edges of the real world. Make sure they learn the law, yes, though I doubt most people going to law school these days are really lovers of the law as a means to protect individuals rights. They're more in the mold of Kamala Harris, choosing it as the blunt instrument to make others do what she wants.
Anyway, by removing all hateful language from exams or discussion, imagine what their reaction will be when they encounter outside of academe. I don't think they'll faint or swoon; their emotional reaction will be one of rage, and they'll whip themselves into a self-righteous fury to destroy someone who would offend their sensibilities that way.
That's what we want out of lawyers, right? Attack dogs with statute books?
Interesting Substack article:
No, the Revolution Isn't Over. There's been much speculation that wokeness is running out of steam, but so far nothing has turned up to replace it, so it's likely to continue.
I can sympathize a bit with Will feeling caught in-between the two sides politically, but what he has to offer doesn't have much to recommend itself either. He seems to be stuck back in the 1980s.
@Althouse, what Sebastian wrote at 10:41.
Amusingly, the way it hashes out in the real world goes like this: the "n" word may trigger both state and federal charges (forget free speech -- simple assault would be used as the underlying offense): the "b" word or even the "c" word does not, in practice. Heck, a professor could break into a heterosexual female student's house, rape her, and scrawl the "b" word on her, and while he would be charged with the crime of rape, it would never count as a hate crime.
Which is not the way the laws are written. It is the way the laws are interpreted by the ADL and NAACP and HRC and then selectively enforced by law enforcement, law be damned. And I don't mean the cops.
The comments at WaPo are depressing. We are truly doomed.
I bet that Kilbourne thought that his hypothetical would appeal to his students, who live in a world of belief that women of color are routinely abused and taunted by their white supremacist bosses.
Little did he know that they would turn their screetching wrath on him.
The students are not "snowflakes" and the language didn't frighten them. It is a power exercise.
Mike of Snoqualmie said... "His response should have been...."
Yes, and in so doing pointedly avoid any word beginning with either "b" or "n" out of compassion lest the offending onset consonant trigger a medical emergency.
I think the comparison with the Khmer Rouge is one of those comparisons that inflames more than it clarifies. Even in the history of obscene Leftist mass murder, the Khmer Rouge stands alone, having murdered somewhere between 15% and 30% of their own population -- a feat unequalled, I believe, by any other 20th century regime. The better analogy is Mao's little Red Guards during the early part of the Cultural Revolution, in that the persecution is driven by radical students, enabled by the cowardice of their elders, and egged on a few influential yet deeply irresponsible individuals. Though even there, the Americans are less charismatic and less vicious than Mao, and the Antifa and BLM arson, violence, and intimidation indulged by local Party authorities is not so severe as what the Red Guards did. Not yet at least.
When the GOP takes back Presidency in 2024, to go along with continued control of the House and the Senate, the first thing that should be done is an Execute Order, followed by a law, stating that no Federally guaranteed student loans shoudl be allowed to go to any school that:
1: Has an administrator to teach ratio higher than teh 1984 US 4 year college / university average
2: Has any administrators in jobs that have any of the following words in their titles:
Bias, sensitivity, diversity, inclusion, equity, sustainability
3: Employs any person, in any capacity, who had one of the words from #2 in their job title in any year from 2020 on, other than those for whom "equity" referred to a financial instrument.
4: Practices any sort of skin color or "origin of ancestor" based "affirmative action"
5: Does not admit at least 50% of its students based on objective measures of academic excellence
You want to be touchy feely? That's perfectly fine. you just don't get any tax dollars to subsidize your choice
15. Plaintiff spontaneously offered to send a note of regret to his class if those oblique references had caused anyone any distress. The dean agreed, and Plaintiff sent such a message to his class.
As Mike of Snoqualmie said, that was a mistake. Kilburn shoudl have said "anyone who can't handle that hypothetical has no business being a lawyer, and should immediately withdraw from school and stop wasting their money."
From the lawsuit:
OAE’s investigation report asserts “ OAE does not address or make determinations regarding the extent that academic freedom principles may apply to the facts at issue in this investigation. Instead, OAE considers whether, based on the totality of the circumstances, racial discrimination or racial harassment occurred .....”
Which is a rather startling admission, since they've just said "our investigations are worthless"
In fairness, that is a pretty simple-minded fact pattern to put on an exam - where is the nuance, where is the argument that the employer would not be liable?
rhhardin said...
A sludge of ignorance and cowardice oozes so constantly through today’s campuses that institutions acquire immunity through recidivism: Progressivism’s totalitarian temptation is too commonplace to be newsworthy. Academia’s vindictive intolerance has become humdrum.
Will's prose style is the sludge. Barthelme notices it in the pop form but not in the academic form, which nevertheless includes itself in his description:
----------
I react the same way to Conrad Black
Mike of Snoqualmie said...
Kilburn's mistake was sending a note of regret. His response should have been to suck it up and stop being a class of whining female dogs. He should have told the class that they are expected to have stamina of battle steel, not toilet paper. Then tell the dean that if he is prepared to file a civil rights lawsuit against UIC and the dean personally if UIC pursues the matter further.
----------
very illuminating
so a Professor sets exam question to students for civil procedure >>>
- students are undone by this question and
- professor is undone by lack of knowledge / guts about school academic procedure
In the real world, a lawyer will encounter all sorts of bad behavior (that is why we have courts). This includes rape and murder (to defend or prosecute). Civil law can include such discrimination suits. When you file a discrimination suit, it may not be adequate to say the boss called your client a bad name. You need to be specific. The attack on the prof is like arresting an anatomy teacher in med school for pornography when he has students dissect a female cadaver. Some law students do not want to hear about rape either.
I'm struck by how people see that somehow students are able to be lawyers because of the expressed sensitivity. Quite the opposite, the students are using the advantages and techniques available. They aren't cheating they are making use of current realities to get the advantage over the system.
Sheesh, this is stuff that even the movie Clueless understood when Cher argued for better grades and was applauded by her lawyer dad.
The admin creates the situation that is exploited and faculty should adapt by not playing into obvious exploitable ways then cry about it when the obvious response is pursued.
This seems like a 'try on the glove' moment.
"If so, would UIC’s unconscious emulators be discomfited by the resemblance? Unlikely."
Seconded. WHen will the Center-right ever understand that the Left has an agenda and wants to implement it - by any means neccessary? Or that the left hates people who disagree with them. They don't want to have a "jolly good discussion over a glass of port" - they want to have power and rule.
I always imagine American Conservatives back in 1918 Russia. They'd be running around wondering why that nice Mr. Lenin was doing all these "crazy things" and acting so "Stupid". And hoping they and Mr. Lenin could just sit down at brunch and have a nice talk.
I saw this kind of atmosphere developing about twenty years ago, when an activist education professor manipulated students into parading around our campus with posters claiming that “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “ was racist. That was when I stopped teaching teaching
“Huck Finn,” and taught other Twain works like “Connecticut Yankee,” “Life on the Mississippi,” and “The Mysterious Stranger” instead. I didn’t want the stress. As late as six years ago, when I taught Hurston’s “ Their Eyes Were Watching God,” written in Florida, Black dialect, I frequently read passages aloud that used the n-word and similar terms. No one complained, but I wouldn’t do that today in the current woke climate.
The reference to Darkness At Noon was directly on target. While I have no doubt that the current batch of wokester lefties would happily exterminate a certain percentage of the US population if it could similar to the Khmer Rouge, we’re not there yet. It was the emotional and mental experience of Rubashov that describes what we are seeing today….up until the time that he experienced that “shrug of infinity”. Then we get Khmer Rouge.
- Krumhorn
(my preferred adjectives: brilliant/awesome)
Robert Cook said...
But, how many students really protested or were upset?
Were actually upset? 0
How many protested? 2
@tommyesq: That's a good question. It was a civil procedure exam, so he was not asking a question about liability for using racist language around black employees. My guess is that he was asking students to consider all the reasons a court might not accept a claim that was based on obviously wrongful conduct, outrageous conduct - maybe problems with venue, or jurisdiction, or statute of limitations, something like that. The point is to get students to put aside their emotions about the claim and think logically about the other elements of the case, the civil procedure elements. That's an important skill that good professors try to teach their students.
Skeptical Voter said...
Ah bringing the real world to life in a law school hypothetical. After a lifetime of practicing law I can tell you (and those young yet to be lawyers) that hypothetical is a day at the beach compared to some things they might see in the course of their practice.
---
Such as writing appellate briefs for child and youth services defending termination of parental rights when the medical testimony is about a four-month-old with broken bones and no genetic defects. If you can't handle words on an exam - or the school authorities are willing to play act that you can't - then neither you nor the school authorities deserve the places you both hold.
It will be interesting to see what happens to these "Woke" law students when they graduate. Will they pass the Bar exam? Or fail like Hillary and Kamala? I see small interest in legal firms doing trial work. HR departments might be a good fit or, most likely, government jobs in a Democrat administration.
I stopped reading George will many years ago. I find his faux erudite persona quite alienating. His essays are littered with
egregious literary/historical allusions that do little to advance his arguments, but are used primarily for self-aggrandizement.
His main rhetorical technique is the overuse of aphorisms: aphorisms upon aphorisms. He seldom develops his arguments at any length,
relying instead on strategically placed laconic statements and maxims to carry his theses. Emerson and Thoreau also both relied on aphoristic phrasing, but they at least explained them at some length. His analytic power is quite limited.
Kilborn doesn’t seem to be a particularly good lawyer on his own behalf. This should have been an easy jam to get out of, but instead he made things worse by getting himself into a 4 hour Zoom call argument with a member of the Black Law Students Association and refusing to take the diversity training https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/exam-question-wasnt-only-offensive-behavior-of-uic-law-professor-according-to-internal-investigation>on the basis that it would be a “ridiculous waste of time” and wouldn’t do anything except “aggravate” him as the person forced into it.
Professor Kilborn’s faculty page links to his profile at Hein Online, which gives him a ScholarRank of 10,575. By comparison, Ann Althouse has a ScholarRank of 1,614 (blogging doesn’t factor into the methodology). Cass Sunstein and Richard Posner are ranked 1st and 2nd, respectively,
As for George Will’s column, he’s equating being put on paid leave, not getting a raise, and having to take a diversity program offered through Cornell University with the Khmer Rouge and the Cultural Revolution.
For how smart Will supposedly is, he never stops to think how his rabid support for the DC Swamp enables the things that horrifying him so.
You can't be a warrior for freedom while wearing yellow women's slacks to baseball games and hating on Trump from your DC mansion.
George Will has a long way to go to WAKE UP... he used to be a good columnist.. Now... not so good.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
Kilborn doesn’t seem to be a particularly good lawyer on his own behalf. This should have been an easy jam to get out of, but instead he made things worse by getting himself into a 4 hour Zoom call argument with a member of the Black Law Students Association and refusing to take the diversity training https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/exam-question-wasnt-only-offensive-behavior-of-uic-law-professor-according-to-internal-investigation>on the basis that it would be a “ridiculous waste of time” and wouldn’t do anything except “aggravate” him as the person forced into it.
1: Yes, he was stupid, he attempted to discus things with teh BSA agitators as if they were reasonable human beings, rather than racist thugs
2: He was quite correct to refuse to undergo the "diversity training". First of alll, because it's worthless trash that doesn't accomplish anything, and second of all because it's ideological indoctrination, which nothing subject to the First Amendment (like a public college) can force on an employee.
Third, he wasn't just required to TAKE the indoctrination, he was required to "pas" it, meaning he had to parrot back to the thug running teh course what teh thug wanted to hear, in order to get his job back.
I would happily "take" a "diversity training" class that I didn't have to pass, because it would be fun to spend the entire time of the class harassing the indoctrinator, and exposing him / her / it for the racist and sexist moron that they all are.
but being forced to "pass" it? No fucking way
Achilles,
"They need to be shipped HALF way to China."
FIFY.
Post a Comment