July 29, 2022

"After a year of high-profile scandals, Yale Law School is retiring an all-student listserv that became a breeding ground for progressive activism and online pile-ons..."

"If students want to 'debate important questions,' the dean of Yale Law School Heather Gerken announced in an email on Wednesday, they can post on a physical bulletin board in the law school’s hallway. 'Debate and dialogue are the touchstones of an academic institution,' Gerken said. The new forum will force students to 'take time to reflect before posting, a habit that lawyers and members of a scholarly community must practice.'"

It's mind-boggling that Yale law students can't be left to their own devices writing on an email list. 
In the days before email, students and faculty would post their views on a bulletin board, nicknamed the "Wall," in the law school’s main hallway. That system, which Yale Law School is bringing back, "provided a healthy reminder that human beings are on the receiving end of the messages people send," Gerken said. "Indeed, sometimes students would run into the very people with whom they were debating and speak face-to-face."

Yale law students can't keep track of the humanity of the people on the receiving end of the email they write? What a concession! 

35 comments:

Dave Begley said...

Censorship never works. The students will find another online forum.

The real issue is why are so many Yale law students are radical extremists.

Kai Akker said...

Sounds like great preparation at Yale Law for developing a future Samuel Alito.

The Yale bear market grinds on.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"It's mind-boggling that Yale law students can't be left to their own devices writing on an email list."

Neither can 'journolists'. Yale students learned it by watching you dad. They learned it by watching you!

MadTownGuy said...

Now do Twitter and Facebook.

retail lawyer said...

Perhaps Yale Law needs to adjust their admission criteria. Employers and clients might consider the likely inadequacies and problems inherent in the Yale Law brand.

Sebastian said...

"It's mind-boggling that Yale law students can't be left to their own devices writing on an email list."

It's mind-boggling! It's so weird! They should be better! Why aren't they better?

"Yale law students can't keep track of the humanity of the people on the receiving end of the email they write? What a concession!"

What a concession! It's so weird! Who knew? Why can't they keep track of each other's humanity? They should be better!

Anyway, we're dealing with progs here. They couldn't care less about the "humanity of people on the receiving end." They like to hit opponents where it hurts. Left to their own devices, they'll turn anything into a prog attack tool. The only surprising thing here is that Yale Law wants to dial down the prog crazy. It got a little embarrassing even for them.

RMc said...

This is why we can't have nice listservs (listserves?).

Owen said...

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Wince said...

Sounds like Heather Gerken is in a pickle.

Temujin said...

Yale Law School is a disaster. The things that keep coming out of there are woeful. And I'm not just talking about their grads currently in our government or trying to get back into our government.

gilbar said...

Yale law students can't keep track of the humanity of the people

as i posted above, people need to realize that All people are The Same Race: The Human Race
All Lives Matter

Robert Marshall said...

Maybe what Yale Law needs is a curriculum so demanding and so challenging that Yale Law students don't have apparently ample time for the stupid woke posturing and virtue-signaling that has seemed recently to be their main occupation.

Plus, an administration that takes seriously the concept of academic freedom of expression, rather than acting as a nanny scolding all the bad children who don't mouth the woke pieties.

Worth a try?

Gusty Winds said...

'Debate and dialogue are the touchstones of an academic institution,'

They should be, and maybe at one-time they were, but liberals took over colleges and killed it. If you spent your career in higher education, or went to college in the last thirty years, it should be no surprise that “Yale law students can't be left to their own devices writing on an email list”.

Administrators and Professors have failed their own institutions. They supported and allowed restrictions on “hate speech”, the creation of safe spaces, and the cancellation of public speakers. It was all basically to protect the influx of student debt money, and pension protection. Colleges are now a large scale grift.

I got out of grad school in Dec 1993. You could see the power structure changing during the Clinton/Bush 1992 Presidential election. Liberals were taking over for good.

With a straight face Yale hired Elizabeth Warren and promoted her as a Native American professor because she submitted a “Pow Wow Chow” recipe to some cookbook. They should not be shocked at the deterioration of their institution. It’s the result of self-inflicted wounds.

Critter said...

Another admission that progressivism is a disease. Perhaps society should quarantine progressives until they are no longer capable of imposing harm on others. It’s not that people don’t have the right to think what they want, it is that people should not have the right to inflict harm on those who disagree. They are like a modern lynch mob of the KKK. Sick people.

Mike Sylwester said...

The real problem was that some arguments on listserv were being made by conservative students.

Leland said...

Perhaps Yale should consider their admission policies?

n.n said...

JournoListic model.

Owen said...

Yale Law School tuition is now just under $70K. With $21K for living expenses and $4K for books and administrative fees, we are kissing $100K a year. Then there is bus fare and dry cleaning to show up for interviews.

This is for three years. After which you can show up at some law firm and begin “practice” of a craft about which, you will later realize, you know absolutely nothing. You are lucky to find work at some place that will train you, sticking its clients with the bill and gradually turning you into a productive member of society.

If you show up for work full of self-righteousness AND $300K of student debt, things will go hard for you. Just sayin’.

Lurker21 said...

"It's mind-boggling that Yale law students can't be left to their own devices writing on an email list."

Is it? Grievance-mongering provides work for lawyers in the real, post-university world. Grievance-mongers gotta start grieving and mongering early to hone their skills.

JK Brown said...

"Some of the worst people in the country are graduates of Harvard and Yale Law School" - Joseph Epstein
He attributes it to the fact that so many of the students are motivated by the empty ambition of having gone to Harvard and Yale, not for the scholarly value.

source: Uncommon Knowledge https://youtu.be/JF2eJSHKKd0?t=999

And this plays into this observation by Thomas Sowell that the more scholarly students are not those who attend the elite, status universities
https://youtu.be/SMeUlWFFFgo?t=24

Tom T. said...

It's commonly understood at law firms that newly-graduated lawyers need a lot of supervision, but Yale is really advertising that fact.

Joe Smith said...

I can't believe how many morons get admitted to supposedly 'elite' schools.

Tax every endowment over $1B at 90 percent.

Because right now they are nothing but hedge funds.

LA_Bob said...

I'm reminded of a blog comment several years ago by a retired college professor who noted that 20-year-olds in 2015 were simply not at the maturity level of 20-year-olds in 1980.

I think the post had been about some professor who had thrown a party at her home and invited the students and some scandal ensued.

Kevin said...

It's mind-boggling that Yale law students can't be left to their own devices writing on an email list.

Perhaps teaching a generation that the first to call the other a racist wins was not a good idea?

Enigma said...

Jonathan Haidt (they NY Sociology professor and very left wing) observed that the children coming into college were profoundly fragile 5-10 years ago. Those fragile undergrads are now filling law schools.

This is not a left-right debate, rather, many children were raised on Facebook, Instagram, Netflix trash, 4Chan, and 1,000 video game chatrooms. They have heard only knee-jerk emotional reactions their entire lives. They have never debated, just stabbed out or been stabbed...then they run away to a friendly clique. But they know that every single thing said is on the Internet forever. They live under a collective memory Sword of Damocles, and thereby seek to signal virtue.

Our youth have aged but they have not matured.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

Is this action premised on Yale law students not being able to figure out how to replace the school-provided listserv, or on the expectation that they will? Why should Yale spend time monitoring such of forum? It’s not in Yale’s wheelhouse, whereas it is in the wheelhouse of companies like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.

Michael K said...

I wonder where those students expect to work after graduation? There just aren't enough left wing foundation jobs. They seem unfitted for anything else.

Static Ping said...

Yale was taken over by leftists, but leftists who had some sort of liberal education. They recruit leftists as students and provide them with a leftist education. The Yale administration and professors then are baffled why the students act like unrestrained leftists.

Intelligent people can be mighty stupid.

Narayanan said...

Perhaps Yale Law needs to adjust their admission criteria. Employers and clients might consider the likely inadequacies and problems inherent in the Yale Law brand.
=====
why not straightly on to USSC

Ann Althouse said...

“ Is this action premised on Yale law students not being able to figure out how to replace the school-provided listserv, or on the expectation that they will? Why should Yale spend time monitoring such of forum? It’s not in Yale’s wheelhouse, whereas it is in the wheelhouse of companies like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.”

Students could set up an independent listserv that could be voluntarily joined, but I don’t think they could put all the students on it and replicate the official email list.

alicante69 said...

Guess which law school is still rated #1 by US News.

Goldenpause said...

Sounds like YLS needs to shut down and start over — and that whoever highly rates YLS needs to be shut down permanently. YLS had a certain “reputation” among real practicing lawyers 40 years ago and obviously things have not improved since then. Caveat Emptor.

Bunkypotatohead said...

"Students could set up an independent listserv that could be voluntarily joined, but I don’t think they could put all the students on it and replicate the official email list."

If "students" set one up, it will be limited to those with appropriate opinions. Anyone else will be banned.

Lurker21 said...

I wonder where those students expect to work after graduation?

Most of them still get jobs with big firms. They have a hard time paying off their loans if they don't. And since the big firms drew on YLS in the past, the grads of previous years are likely to hire the current grads.

There are activists who don't want those jobs and who do go into more activist positions after graduation, but there are plenty of students who go along with the politically correct talk while they are there, but don't let it get in the way of their career and financial ambitions. Because the big money world they are moving into also plays at being woke and socially conscious, a little law school leftishness doesn't cost them anything. It's just taken to be opposition to Satan Trump and Demon White supremacy.

Tina Trent said...

Michael K: have you not looked at the job proliferation and pay scales for lawyers in so-called nonprofits, government, and academic jobs? Not to mention the diversity machinery taking over private industry.

They are reimbursed far more, work far less, and have job protection and career advancement opportunities not imagined by the vast majority of the actually productive private sector.

See, for example, Michelle Obama.