"He saw his reputation tarnished when he pleaded guilty to a morals charge involving a minor."

A sad subheadline to the headline that, otherwise would have elicited a fond goodbye: "Peter Yarrow, troubadour of Peter, Paul and Mary folk trio, dies at 86" (WaPo).

Let's go back to simpler times, 1965:

ADDED: From Wikipedia:

"The Cornell University student accused of making violent threats against his Jewish peers is a 21-year-old engineering student..."

"... who suffers from such 'severe depression' that his mother worried he was on the brink of suicide just moments before his arrest. Patrick Dai, a junior at the prestigious university, was arrested by federal authorities Tuesday for allegedly making a string of disturbing online posts over the weekend threatening to kill and rape Jewish students and to 'bring an assault rifle to campus.' Investigators traced the deranged posts to Dai’s IP address at his off-campus apartment, where he allegedly admitted to being the culprit, according to a federal complaint."

The NY Post reports.

It does seem that he wanted to be caught: He was traceable through his IP address. It seems he's thrown his life away, and his parents thought he was going to commit suicide. 

"Threats against Cornell’s Jewish students reported to FBI, school says."

 WaPo reports.

One post called Jewish students “rats” and said, “If you see a Jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats.” Another post was titled “gonna shoot up 104 west,” an apparent reference to Cornell’s kosher and multicultural dining room.... 

"It was in my women’s-studies classes, too, that I was first exposed to a corresponding movement that came to be known as sex-positive feminism."

"Mirroring the Reagan era’s 'me-first' ethos, it eschewed economic issues and those related to male violence in favor of a politics of personal fulfillment centered on the concept of female pleasure. (In my 'French Feminisms' class, the preferred term for such was jouissance.) The rough idea was that women should be celebrated not just as desirable objects but as desiring subjects, and that, in liberating their libido and seizing the terms of their objectification, they might liberate themselves, too. It followed that even entanglements that appeared to present asymmetries of power could be justified on the ground that the participants were acting out a fantasy or engaging in role-play. Conversely, the inherently emotional aspect of sex, along with its ability to make one human feel bound to another, went unmentioned. So did the fact that, in heterosexual relations, biology rendered the female party the more physically vulnerable one. It was thanks to this line of thinking—a line I later came to regard as casuistry—that I was able both to justify my affair and to identify myself as a feminist while conducting my personal life in a way that might suggest otherwise. That X considered himself a 'male feminist' and appeared to harbor few ethical qualms about what we were doing seemed to be further evidence that nothing about our situation could possibly be wrong. And, besides, wasn’t morality 'socially constructed,' too?... By the second month, I was in a quasi-fugue state."

Writes Lucinda Rosenfeld in "My Adventures in Deconstruction/A college affair turns coming of age into coming apart" (The New Yorker). 

X was a professor — at Cornell. The author, a Cornell junior majoring in comparative literature, was 20. X was 15 years older than she and married. The year was 1990.

Whatever a "quasi-fugue state" might be, a "fugue state" is, these days, in a medical setting, called "dissociative fugue" and defined as: "One or more episodes of amnesia in which the inability to recall some or all of one's past and either the loss of one's identity or the formation of a new identity occur with sudden, unexpected, purposeful travel away from home." 

"What was unique about the Cornell situation is they rapidly turned in a response that was a 'hard no.'"

"There was no level of kowtowing. It was a very firm defense of what it means to get an education."

Said Alex Morey, the director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, quoted in "Should College Come With Trigger Warnings? At Cornell, It’s a ‘Hard No.’ When the student assembly voted to require faculty to alert students to upsetting educational materials, administrators pushed back" (NYT). 

The student assembly voted unanimously that it "implores all instructors to provide content warnings on the syllabus for any traumatic content that may be discussed," and the university president Martha E. Pollack, vetoed the resolution, the first use of this veto in more than 20 years.

The students' use of the word" implores" makes it sound like a mere request, but there was also the resolution that "students who choose to opt-out of exposure to triggering content will not be penalized, contingent on their responsibility to make up any missed content."

"Cornell University announced the temporary suspension of all fraternity parties and social events in a statement on Monday..."

"... following alerts from the school’s Police Department over the weekend that one student was sexually assaulted and at least four others were drugged at off-campus residences affiliated with fraternities registered with the school.... The Cornell police said they were made aware on Nov. 4 of at least four students who said they drank little or no alcohol at off-campus parties in recent weeks but became incapacitated. The students told the officers they had been 'exposed to Rohypnol,' the so-called date-rape drug."

The NYT reports.

"With the slogan 'Silence is Violence' being used at the law school, there will be enormous pressure for student groups to go along. Not to do so would be deemed an act of 'violence.'"

Writes Professor William Jacobson about an effort by some students at Cornell Law School to get student groups to sign a letter that seems — I don't have access to the letter — to be accusing Jacobson of racism and urging students to boycott his classes.

This is an attempt not just to scare students away from my course, but to scare students away from speaking their minds, and to create a faculty and student purity test.

I have received numerous emails from students telling me I have a lot of “quiet” support at the law school, but that students are afraid to speak out for fear of career-ending false accusations of racism....

This toxic atmosphere didn’t need to take place. At a time when the law school desperately needs an adult in the room, so to speak, we have faculty and a Dean who denounce me.

"Jonathan Turley rips Cornell Law faculty letter against me: 'It is the antipathy of the intellectual foundations for higher education.'"

A new post by William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, linking to "Cornell Professors Declare 'Informed Commentary' Criticizing The Protests As Racism" by Jonathan Turley.

An excerpt from Turley: "What is most striking for me is the inclusion of Professors Mark H. Jackson and Cortelyou Kenney, who teach in the Cornell First Amendment Clinic. They are in fact the Director and Associate Director of the First Amendment Clinic, which is presumably committed to the value of free speech even at private institutions. So these professors teach free speech and just signed a letter that people who question the BLM movement or denounce the looting are per se or at least presumptive racists. It is reflection of how free speech is being redefined to exclude protections with those who hold opposing views."

From Jacobson: "The law school, as an institution, picked sides and declared in a Dean’s Statement that my writings 'do not reflect the values of Cornell Law School ….' I vigorously disagree with that, but was not given a chance to be heard on it, much less some process to contest it.... [T]he Dean’s statement on behalf of the institution... should have been something along the lines of: 'Though I vigorously disagree with Professor Jacobson’s views, those views are protected by academic freedom and no disciplinary action will be taken.' Period."

ADDED: "'It is the antipathy..." — Doesn't he mean "It is the antithesis..."?

In context:

Not a word about academic freedom or free of speech [sic]; not a suggestion that critics of these protests could have anything other than racist motivations. It is the antipathy of the intellectual foundations for higher education. Rather than address the merits of arguments, you attack those with opposing views personally and viciously. That has become a standard approach to critics on our campuses. Unless you agree with the actions of the movement, you are per se racist. It is a mantra that is all too familiar historically: if you are not part of the resistance, you are reactionary.

"Ever since I started Legal Insurrection in October 2008, it’s been an awkward relationship given the overwhelmingly liberal faculty and atmosphere."

"Living as a conservative on a liberal campus is like being the mouse waiting for the cat to pounce. For over 12 years, the Cornell cat did not pounce. Though there were frequent and aggressive attempts by outsiders to get me fired, including threats and harassment, it always came from off campus.... Not until now, to the best of my knowledge, has there been an effort from inside the Cornell community to get me fired. The impetus for the effort was two posts I wrote at Legal Insurrection regarding the history and tactics of the Black Lives Matter Movement: The impetus for the effort was two posts I wrote at Legal Insurrection regarding the history and tactics of the Black Lives Matter Movement: 'Reminder: “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a fabricated narrative from the Michael Brown case ,"  "The Bloodletting and Wilding Is Part of An Agenda To Tear Down The Country."... My clinical faculty colleagues, apparently in consultation with the Black Law Students Association, drafted and then published in the Cornell Sun on June 9 a letter [with] absurd name-calling, distorting and even misquoting my writings, to the extent it purports to be about me.... None of the 21 signatories, some of whom I’d worked closely with for over a decade and who I considered friends, had the common decency to approach me with any concerns.... We are living in extraordinarily dangerous times, reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution, in which professors guilty of wrongthink were publicy denounced and fired at the behest of students who insisted on absolute ideological orthodoxy. It’s a way of instilling terror in other students, faculty, staff, and society, so that others shut up and don’t voice dissenting views."

From "There’s an effort to get me fired at Cornell for criticizing the Black Lives Matter Movement" by William Jacobson (at Legal Insurrection).

"Isn’t it a pity that you need to analyze cases? You can’t just go around with your mouth open waiting for a spoon that will feed it to you in one big, luscious bite!"

"Students should sue. The teachers should just give you the law," said Professor Robert S. Summers, transcribed by my son John when he was a student at Cornell Law School, quite a few years ago and posted to John's blog when Professor Summers retired in 2010. John wrote, "Summers took the Socratic method to the extreme. He rarely made any direct statement about anything, almost always preferring to ask questions instead."

Now, we see, "Robert Summers, pre-eminent legal scholar, dies at 85" (Cornell Chronicle):

Robert S. Summers, who grew up milking cows on his family’s farm in Oregon and went on to co-write the most widely cited treatise on U.S. commercial transaction laws and help draft laws governing Russia, Egypt and Rwanda, died March 1 in New Canaan, Connecticut. Summers, Cornell’s William G. McRoberts Research Professor Emeritus in Administration of the Law, was 85....

Summers joined the Cornell Law School faculty in 1969. During his career, he produced 55 books and more than 100 articles, including influential works on legal realism, statutory interpretation, and form and substance in the law....

[H]e was known for his dedication to the Socratic method of teaching: instilling principles and concepts through rigorous questioning and argument, rather than “ladling [information] out on a spoon,” as he said....

Goodbye to one of the great law professors. Was anyone else ever so dedicated to the Socratic method? I grew up with a father who wished he had become a lawyer and who liked to wield what he called the Socratic method in family conversations. I was a law professor myself, and the Socratic method was always only a distant ideal.

"The Black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students."

"While these students have a right to flourish at Cornell, there is a lack of investment in Black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America. Cornell must work to actively support students whose families have been impacted for generations by white supremacy and American fascism."

From "Cornell Black Students group issues 6-page list of demands" (Legal Insurrection).

This demand must strike fear into institutions that are engaging in racial balancing on a superficial, how-does-it-look? level.

"Cornell University Students Vote Against Intellectual Diversity, on Grounds It Would Harm Diversity."

A funny headline on a piece over at Reason.com by Robby Soave. At Cornell, the Student Assembly voted down a resolution that called for a committee to look into the lack of political diversity in the Cornell faculty. The arguments against the resolution were summarized as:

(1) conservatives have not been historically oppressed as have other groups; (2) spending resources on intellectual diversity diverts resources from promoting other forms of diversity; and (3) conservative students are free to speak out in class if they find something disagreeable or wish to argue their own point of view....

The headline isn't very fair to that 3-point objection to having this committee. It focuses on #2 and distorts even that. I rather doubt that the cute, clickable headline was written by Soave, because he disapproves of campus conservatives acting like leftist students by "playing the victim" and inviting speakers who are "provocateurs" and not serious experts in "philosophy and policy."

I don't agree with Soave's disapproval. I think you can have philosophers and policy wonks and also lively provocateurs, and I think it's worth exploring victimology — who's really the victim? I've spent enough time around conservatives and libertarians to know that their pretensions about neutral, egg-headed reason feel hollow and deceptive much of the time to those of us who aren't already on their side. I believe it's unreasonable to deny that emotion is part of human reason, and I have seen Reason magazine philosophy/policy types boil over with anger at the expression of that belief.

But I want to get back to that headline, inapt as it is for Soave's brief essay on the Cornell committee that was not to be. It seems like an argument through stating a paradox: They voted against diversity on the ground that it would hurt diversity. (It's reminiscent of that old Vietnam War line: "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.")

But it occurs to me that there are some ideas that are destructive of intellectual diversity. I don't mean ideas put into practice, such as censorship or discrimination based on viewpoint. I mean the ideas themselves. Within a free-speech approach, you can argue that censorship or viewpoint discrimination is a good idea. It would be censorship or viewpoint discrimination to exclude those ideas. People can see those arguments in the marketplace of ideas and decide for themselves if they want to buy them. You might say, but if people do accept those ideas, they might put them into practice, but if you believe in the overarching idea of free speech, you are trusting people to consider and reject the bad ideas, and you think the idea of free speech will win in the marketplace.

But there is one type of idea that just as an idea is destructive of the diversity in the marketplace of ideas. Do you see what it is? It's an idea that is so good it wrecks the market for all the competing ideas, the completely convincing idea. There are many ideas like that — problems where the solutions have been discovered. We needn't puzzle over the possible answers anymore. We know (or feel sure that we know). That's the one type of idea that you should exclude if intellectual diversity is your most sacred goal. That shows why intellectual diversity can't be your highest goal. Why would you exclude the most devastatingly obviously correct ideas?

I'll pose one answer to my question and let you decide whether you want to buy it: You'd exclude those ideas when you have other ideas you want to protect from competition. So then there's this corollary: To genuinely love intellectual diversity and to want to exclude one of the ideas is to admit that it's devastatingly better than those other ideas.

And, yes, yes, of course I know that "they" do not really love intellectual diversity. It's a hypothetical. Assume genuine love for intellectual diversity. Assume it is really and truly your highest value. If you had 10 ideas about how to solve a particular problem and a new idea came along that was so obviously true that no one would bother with the other 10 anymore, you would suppress the 11th idea, so that you could continue to benefit from the vibrancy of 10 living, breathing ideas.

If that's all too abstract, think it through in the context of a culture with 10 thriving religions and the question whether to ban the discussion of atheism.

Somebody at Cornell Law School stole a law student's Ruth Bader Ginsburg lunch bag.

Email sent to everyone:

"If you let my lunch bag go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill yell at you. To the low life who literally stole my lunch and dinner, please have the decency to at least return my WLC lunch bag to the kitchen. I just want Ruthey to get home safely."

The sad thing about this, other than that theft exists, is that if anybody else has an RBG lunch bag, they can't use it without looking like a thief. And I would think that a lot of people, upon learning that there is such a thing as a Ruth Bader Ginsburg lunch bag might want to get one...



... and now — at the very point of desire formation — they must leave that desire unrequited, because it is linked inextricably with looking like a thief.

"Cornell gives deer tubal ligations..."

"... everything goes wrong."

MOOCs — Massive open online courses...

"... have caught fire in academia." 

They offer, at no charge to anyone with Internet access, what was until now exclusive to those who earn college admission and pay tuition. Thirty-three prominent schools, including the universities of Virginia and Maryland, have enlisted to provide classes via Coursera.

For his seven-week course — which covers advanced math and statistics in the context of public health and biomedical sciences — [Brian] Caffo posts video lectures, gives quizzes and homework, and monitors a student discussion forum. On the first day, the forum lit up with greetings from around the world. Heady stuff for a 39-year-old associate professor who is accomplished in his field but hardly a global academic celebrity.

“I can’t use another word than unbelievable,” Caffo said. Then he found some more: “Crazy . . . surreal . . . heartwarming.”

A crazy, surreal, heatwarming, graduate-level math class.

“The real question is, if you start to get very good online MOOCs, why do you need a university?” said Joseph A. Burns, dean of faculty at Cornell University. “And what does an Ivy League university bring to the table? What do you give to students that they can’t get sitting at home and eating potato chips?” The campus ideal, he said, “of a teacher and five students crowded around their feet on a sunny lawn or something like that — that’s gone.["]

"You have a steady diet of borderline cases. Is this bending up your mind?"

"Is this having the effect of dulling your sensitivity to the 7 major values of certainty in law? If you’re getting accustomed to life on the borderlines — that's what you're in, life on the borderlines — could that have a prejudicial effect on the general standards that you have with regard to what the law is like? And you just take for granted that the law will be open-ended, spongey, discretion-ridden? Some of you do think there’s value to predictability, determinativeness. There are probably not just 3 ways in which it’s valuable, but probably about 15."

Said the eminent, venerable law professor Robert Summers, according to the verbatim notes of a student in his Contracts class at Cornell Law School. Summers recommended that students try to write everything down, and the student, my son John, followed the recommendation. At the link, you'll find much more about Summers — the ideal of the Socratic law professor, who taught his last class on December 1st.

Professor Summers taught law for 50 years. That's about twice as long as I've taught law, and I see myself as well past the middle of my teaching days. I encountered Professor Summers when I interviewed at Cornell — it was my first law school interview — in the fall of 1983. He went on an oddly long rant about how awful it was to have to grade exams.

If I had a transcript of that now, I'm sure I would see that it was hilarious, but at the time, I was terrified, and I furiously racked my brain to think of some interview-appropriate response. Perhaps if I'd been less tightly wound that day and laughed instead of looking however I looked — mystified? blank? clock-watch-y? — I'd have ended up at Cornell.

But I ended up at Wisconsin. And I'm pleased that my son John grew up in Wisconsin and that he ended up at Cornell — with the presence of mind and the sense of humor to appreciate the great Professor Summers.

John says:

... Summers took the Socratic method to the extreme. He rarely made any direct statement about anything, almost always preferring to ask questions instead.

He mockingly voiced the way he thought students would react:

Isn’t it a pity that you need to analyze cases? You can’t just go around with your mouth open waiting for a spoon that will feed it to you in one big, luscious bite! Students should sue. The teachers should just give you the law.

For me, that is a luscious bite of incentive to keep trying to find the wit and the nerve to go for the Socratic ideal. What if I took a secret vow to teach speaking only in questions? How long would it take the students to notice? And by notice, I mean, notice that I'm using the technique of only asking question, not notice that I am really, really annoying.

Summers talking about another lawprof:

MacNeil was a whale of a law professor! Never uttered a declarative sentence! Never uttered a declarative sentence! Not in 35 years! Best law professor we've ever had! Now he's retired. What a mistake that was. What a mistake that was.

"If I hear one more of these overly loud yawns, get up and walk the hell out."

"You should be asking yourself: Why am I the one loser who has to do that and 220 other people know better?"



Via TaxProf, who says "Cornell Prof Goes Nuts After Student Yawns in Class."

Frankly, I don't think what this teacher (Mark Talbert) did is that bad. The student didn't just yawn, he yawned in an exaggerated, loud way that sounds like intentional disrespect. The teacher indicates that this has happened more than once. How dare one student disrupt a class — a large, serious class — for his personal amusement? 220 students are there, working hard, having paid big tuition, and one loser is appropriating their time and attention and knocking the professor off stride. It's not acceptable, and why doesn't the student know that? Why should a college professor have to give remedial etiquette lessons?

"I went to Cornell.... Ever heard of it?"

There's this:



And then there's the WSJ article calling Cornell Law School "white hot" and it wasn't clear what the reason was.

Some Cornell Law School applicants were citing that Andy Bernard character on "The Office" — in the clip — so the school "decided — let's have a little fun with this." They put the "Office" character on the front page of their website in a slideshow along with various "distinguished" alumni.

And some alumni, distinguished, presumably, but a lack of a sense of humor, started blogging things like "Somebody at the Law School Needs to be Fired." Oh, now they've updated that post to specify that the problem is that Andy Bernard isn't a positive character. He's "like the uncle in your family that nobody quite likes" and "you don't bring him up unless asked." And what are we to think about someone who demands that somebody get fired because he pushed the comedy envelope a little? If I had an uncle who did that I wouldn't quite like him.

An ear for humor is an excellent attribute for a prospective law student. When you read legal arguments, one thing you do is ask: Does this pass the laugh test? Understanding humor is a legal skill, people. Use it. And value your colleagues who have it.

So I think the new popularity of Cornell Law School might be that there are a lot of smart young people who think it will be cool to be able, some day, to say: "I went to Cornell.... Ever heard of it?" And I hope when they get into court, they run rings around the stuffed shirts who can't understand why you'd want to identify with a fictional fool.

***

Disclaimer: My son went to Cornell.  

Ever heard of it?

"I knew I could count on you!!! You’re my hero!!!! My knight in shining armor!!! My private porn star!!!!!"

Everyone's laughing at the email idiots at Cornell. No one can wring out a drop of sympathy, because the "private porn star" and the woman who types exclamation marks are each married to somebody else.

(Via Instapundit.)

ADDED: Love that sex talk:



Now, get back on that horse.