"You might read comments somewhere that I was, at some point, given 'permission' to deliver my remarks by the DEI Assistant Dean, Steinbach. Nonsense."

"For a good 20-30 minutes (I’m estimating), I was ruthlessly mocked and shouted down by a mob after every third word. And then Steinbach launched into her bizarre prepared speech where she simultaneously 'welcomed' me to campus and told me how horrible and hurtful I was to the community. Then she said I should be free to deliver my remarks. Try delivering a lecture under those circumstances. Basically, they wanted me to make a hostage video. No thanks. The whole thing was a staged public shaming, and after I realized that I refused to play along."

Said Judge Kyle Duncan, interviewed by Rod Dreher (at Substack).

So, the judge declined to deliver his speech after Steinbach quieted the crowd for him. He's also now calling for her to be fired. He says it was a "staged public shaming," but that's the same thing as saying that the protest was planned. He and his supporters are engaging in staged public shaming too, and they want a person not just disrupted on one evening but deprived of her job. That's tit for tat and a refusal to stand down.

"Although golf — the game of choice of most presidents, especially Donald Trump — is obviously the great signifier of wealthy indolence, tennis is not far behind."

"Until comparatively recently, and sometimes still today, it has been among the whitest of sports, a game of country clubs with restrictive admissions policies. And, weirdly enough, this is not the first time it has caused a presidential public-relations headache. In 1978, James Fallows — then a White House aide, now a longtime Atlantic contributor — described Jimmy Carter’s poor management skills with an anecdote about the president’s signing off on every appointment booked at the White House tennis court. (Carter denied it on-camera, but there’s a paper trail.) It became a memorable encapsulation of Carter’s flawed presidency: focused on trivia while the big sweeping visions and crises over the Middle East and the economy went unaddressed."

From "Here’s the New White House Tennis Court No One Has Been Waiting For" (New York Magazine). 

For more trashing of the tennis court — really, it's a new building, a pavilion replacing a shed — here's "Melania Trump faces backlash after revealing new White House tennis pavilion/First lady’s announcement sparked a slew of Twitter responses including a terse ‘282,345’ from Washington DC journalist David Corn." 

I see the pavilion was privately funded, but there's a pandemic, so it's supposed to be an outrage. That is, there's a pandemic, and Trump is President. If the pavilion went up during the Biden presidency, the stories would be about Joe's impressive physical fitness that inspires us all to keep in shape, which is so especially important in Covid times. And if Obama were President, the pavilion would inspire people of all colors to take up the ancient sport, heretofore associated with white people. But it's Trump, so it's reprehensible — unempathetic and... racist, because who can think of any black tennis players? 

How ancient is tennis anyway? There was something like tennis in the 12th century and the use of a racket and playing within lines evolves by the 15th century.

Rush Limbaugh thinks he's the origin of the phrase "skulls full of mush," but he's not.

Here's Rush Limbaugh exulting that "his" phrase "skulls full of mush" was used on the TV show "Hawaii Five-0" the other day:

So I’m watching the show, I’m watching the show, and I’m thinking, “Obviously some people think something happened here that I need to pay attention to.” Then I saw it. I heard it. The actor is named Chi McBride, and he portrays a member of the Five-0 squad named Lou Grover, and they have a prisoner — a bad guy — in their interrogation room where they’re running CIA enhanced-interrogation measures.

And the guy they have there is one of these New Age gurus, who is selling the secrets to eternal life and eternal health and all that. And what he really is is a drug dealer, and he’s using these acolytes of his to run drugs around the island and so forth. And they’re interrogating the guy, and here is the character Lou Grover as portrayed by Chi McBride…

MCBRIDE: You take these gullible young students out in the middle of the jungle, get ’em baked out of their minds. … You had these young skulls full of mush tripping so hard, they thought they were actually achieving enlightenment.

RUSH: “You had these young skulls full of mush tripping so hard…” Nobody would tell me what it was. I had to go find the episode and hear it. So just another phrase from the EIB Network now finding its way into the popular lexicon.

Apparently, there's a new "Hawaii Five-0." That, I did not know. But I do know that "skulls full of mush" is from "The Paper Chase," which — as a book and a movie — pre-dates the Rush Limbaugh show by at least 10 years, and it's used very conspicuously in the most well-known sequence in the movie:



Rush does indeed use the phrase, and if it comes up in a TV show script, it's possible that it it made its way into the mind of the writers via "The Rush Limbaugh Show." But if the writers have any connections to law school or lawyers — I'm tempted to research their background — then it's very likely that they know if not the whole movie then at least that "skull full of mush" clip.

Footnote: Back in 2007, I wrote about "skulls full of mush" and "The Paper Chase" in The New York Times.

Tales of gender difference, the Socratic Method, and the hostile environment that is philosophy.

The story of one female University of Wisconsin-Madison student and the undergraduate club the Socratic Society:

“People were yelling and banging on the table to make their points,” [Macy Salzberger] says. “It was basically a free-for-all... The environment felt hostile, and often I was the only girl in the room”...

“I told women that I understood the problem, but that it was possible to balance out the combative tone if more of us came. The women who started coming were intentional, as well. They shared that goal.”...

“Macy has been an outstanding leader,” says Philosophy Department Chair Russ Shafer-Landau. “It’s absolutely vital that we enfranchise all who want to participate in philosophical discussion, and Macy’s efforts have been exemplary in this regard.”

Can we get some Socratic dialogue on what "enfranchise" means here? And nice as it is to feature some hard work by a UW student, do you really believe that if only more women came in at the intake level and "shared" a "goal" of inclusiveness, then some "tone" you view as exclusionary would be "balanced out"? What do you think women are? Are we some bland ingredient to be added to an over-spiced stew to make it more palatable for everyone?

"I’m not a student in your classroom," said Scott Brown to his lady lawprof opponent.

That happened at last night's debate.

After Warren listed the instances in which Brown voted against Democratic-backed bills, a back-and-forth ensued, as the senator tried to respond with a defense of his record. His line brought him some boos. Brown is pitching himself as the likable candidate in this race. Lines like this one could cut against that image he has carefully crafted.

That's WaPo's Sean Sullivan, spinning Brown's effective quip. Boos? I heard cheering. [ADDED: That is, a kind of "ooh!" that sounds to me like appreciation.] The worst thing to me about the clip, which you should watch for yourself, is that Brown lets it show that he's pleased that he got off the funny, telling alternative to "Let me finish" or "I didn't interrupt you, now, please don't interrupt me."

But let's talk about likeability. (Note: I prefer the spelling "likeable" to "likable," even when the candidate seems lickable.) Brown found a memorable, amusing way to cut off an interruption, which made him look good, at least to some people. The key is to look good specifically to those people who are not already strongly against him or for him. Now, the subtlety here is that the man cut off the woman, and he did it in a way that called attention to her position as a teacher, and that's a bit like calling her a schoolmarm, except that we know she's a Harvard law professor, and thus a powerful, elite sort of professor who exercises power in a setting that is traditionally male. She wields masculine power and presumes to control and channel the speech of less powerful males. That's the image of the law school classroom, as depicted — talk about memorable! — in the movie "The Paper Chase."

Now, nearly everyone watching that iconic scene — just linked — in "The Paper Chase," identifies with "Mr. Hart," the student, who resists the control of the imperious lawprof Prof. Kingsfield. And that's how Scott Brown positioned himself, making him a man of the people and her a member of the entitled elite.

Glenn rewatches "The Paper Chase"...

... and muses about the lack of any real Kingsfields these days.

Would you want a Socratic professor? Would you want to be one?

"Clarence Thomas Is Right" about "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

This goes on the top 10 list of TimesSelect frustrations. We lawbloggers -- yeah, sometimes I'm a lawblogger, when the Spirit of the Laws moves me -- really would love to talk about this Stanley Fish piece. I'll skip all his background on the case. You can refer to my old post or -- better -- to the original source, the case of Morse v. Frederick. The key thing is that Justice Thomas looked back to the historical model of public schools:

Teachers instilled [a core of common] values not only by presenting ideas but also through strict discipline. Schools punished students for behavior the school considered disrespectful or wrong.... Rules of etiquette were enforced, and courteous behavior was demanded. To meet their educational objectives, schools required absolute obedience.... [I]n the earliest public schools, teachers taught, and students listened. Teachers commanded, and students obeyed. Teachers did not rely solely on the power of ideas to persuade; they relied on discipline to maintain order.

Fish's calls Thomas on his exclusive reliance on the traditional understanding:

Although Thomas does not make this point explicitly, it seems clear that his approval of an older notion of the norms that govern student behavior stems from a conviction about how education should and should not proceed. When he tells us that it was traditionally understood that “teachers taught and students listened, teachers commanded and students obeyed,” he comes across as someone who shares that understanding.

In Fish's eyes, Thomas doesn't just have a theory of original intent, he has substantive values that he believes in personally.

As do I. If I had a criticism of Thomas, it would be that he does not go far enough. Not only do students not have first amendment rights, they do not have any rights: they don’t have the right to express themselves, or have their opinions considered, or have a voice in the evaluation of their teachers, or have their views of what should happen in the classroom taken into account. (And I intend this as a statement about college students as well as high-school students.)

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! Fish sounds like one severe disciplinarian. I've opposed the too-liberal notion that the classroom should be all about student self-expression. (See my NYT op-ed disagreeing with "Paper Chase" author John Jay Osborn Jr.) But Fish is way ahead of me here. Fish writes that people are confusing education and democracy. And schools are not "democratic contexts."

They are pedagogical contexts and the imperatives that rule them are the imperatives of pedagogy – the mastery of materials and the acquiring of analytical skills.

Fish won't accept the Supreme Court's idea of free speech rights weighed against disruption (which meant that, for example, the students in Tinker had a right to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War). Like Thomas, he says students should have no rights other than "the right to be instructed by well-trained, responsible teachers who know their subjects and stick to them and don’t believe that it is their right to pronounce on anything and everything." Wait! That's a huge right! Isn't it worth much more than the piddling Tinker right? ADDED: Bonus "Mysteries of the Althouse house" photo:

Thinking about Professor Kingsfield again.

Writing the previous post, I ran across a couple of bloggers who talked about going back to my Kingsfield column in the NYT a few weeks ago. (TimesSelect link.) I described a talk by John Jay Osborn Jr., the author of "The Paper Chase," and wrote:

... Osborn says [law students] hate law school, and they hate it because the law professors don’t care about what the students think. “You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer,” said Osborn’s sadistically Socratic professor, Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. This legal discipline deprives students of “their own narrative,” as Osborn put it, and they need to learn how to struggle, as Osborn’s protagonist Hart did, to “reclaim” it. They need to resist what law school tries to impose....

Here's Greg, a law student who actually has had Osborn as his lawprof:

Because Prof. Osborn didn't cold-call, didn't even assign people to be "up" for a particular class, it was the narrative of a few that we heard most from.

This is the #1 problem with relying on volunteers. I, myself, have used volunteers through most of my 20+ years teaching law. It is more relaxed and does give you the good feeling that you're not intruding on anyone. But of course, you are. You're intruding on the minds of everyone in the room, even if they are passive and silent. They may avoid the fear and pressure of getting put on the spot, but that doesn't mean they're having a fine time listening to the students who enjoy engaging with the professor. Osborn wants to empower students to "reclaim" their "personal narrative" in class, but you've got to picture that in practice. Just because the opportunity is offered doesn't mean the students will respond in proportion to their need for personal empowerment or the value of their personal narrative to the classroom experience. Most likely, the students who bring the most empowerment to class will do the most talking. These may be the extroverts or the students who came from families or great schools that got them comfortable with exposing their minds. Having to listen to these already-empowered students may very well disempower the students who are more introverted or whose families did not debate politics at the dinner table or whose high schools were substandard holding pens. It may strengthen some students over others -- perhaps males over females or white students over minorities students. If we care about diversity, we need to worry about a teaching method that activates some and not others. Even if you rankle at "diversity" talk like that and prefer to think in terms of individuals, you should care about systematically empowering some individuals over others. Well, if you rankle at "diversity," you probably hate "empowering" too, but the point remains! If you're going to have a classroom where students do some of the talking, it's best to get the full range of students talking, especially if the students are going into a field like law, where speaking is going to be part of the work. Here's another law student blog post, from Aaron of The Stopped Clock:

One of the best student experiences I had in law school was being taught by J.J. White, who was probably the most like Professor Kingsfield of any professor at UM. He knew his material cold, and I had the impression that he spent more time reviewing cases and preparing for each class than did most of his students.... Had every professor at UM been like him, I would have had to work a lot harder and I would have learned a lot more.

Aaron's post is pretty rambling and entails an awful lot of personal narrative. It's hard to tell what he's driving at. And then it ends with a question for me. Hey, Aaron, I'm the lawprof. I'm the one who wants a neo-Socratic revival. That is, I'm the one with the questions. No answers for you! By the way, I love Prof. Osborn, who sent me a nice note about the NYT column, in which he cleverly pointed out that I used personal narrative and told my own story in the column. He's quite right! Here I am, leading up to a conclusion that rejects the idea of opening up the classroom to students telling their own stories:

When I was applying to law schools in 1977, I really didn't need an anti-authoritarian novel about a young guy who lets a love affair with the professor's daughter eat into his study time. I was married and -- it seemed then -- a little old for that sort of frippery. I was 26. What I needed was to get serious after years of underemployment inspired by books and movies about defying authority. I had to set aside that obsolescent hippie balkiness and adopt a pragmatic attitude for the task ahead. ''One L'' -- which was new then -- laid out the facts about law school and got you just scared enough to fire you up for the challenge.

And of course, "One L" is a personal narrative too. (And where's my letter from Scott Turow?!) I'm not against personal narrative. As a blogger, could I be against personal narrative? Actually, I could. A blog could be much more personal than this, and it could also be utterly impersonal. Like a law school class, you've got to choose where you want to pitch it. Unlike a law school class, you've got a full range of choice. I think it would be downright abusive to make my law school class as personal as this blog... and to make this blog as personal as it could be... well, that would be crazy, wouldn't it? Or are you just waiting for the day when I lay my inhibitions aside and tell you what I really think... and what I really do?

"Distorted rumors" of a law school class.

Cap Times columnist Joel McNally restirs the pot on the UW Law School Kaplan controversy and quotes my NYT column from two weeks ago. He also evokes my column from the week before that -- read it in TimesSelect -- which speaks more generally about teaching law school and challenging law students beyond their comfort zone. I had just heard a talk given by "Paper Chase" author John Jay Osborn Jr., and I was using the book "The Paper Chase" and the character Professor Kingsfield to say something about what we lawprofs should be doing today. McNally on Kingsfield:

Kingsfield was the fictional version of a real-life Harvard law professor who instilled such icy terror in the hearts of his students that one of them turned the experience into "The Paper Chase," a best-selling novel and popular film in the 1970s.

Actually, according to Osborn, Kingsfield wasn't a real professor. He was a fictional concoction, to provide drama. Osborn's own contracts professor was quite lovable. Here's McNally on the Kaplan controversy:

... Madison law professor Leonard Kaplan... somehow finds himself having to defend a lecture that apparently unintentionally offended some Hmong students who may or may not know what was really said. What prompted the uproar was an e-mail circulated by a Hmong student who wasn't in the class. The student later admitted her e-mail "wasn't well-informed," but that she still found whatever was said in the class offensive. Other minority students, who actually did hear Kaplan's remarks in the class, said the e-mail took portions of Kaplan's lecture out of context. They said Kaplan had described racial stereotypes that had been used against Hmong people in a discussion of how the law can conflict with different cultures. In a letter to the dean of the Law School, Kaplan said: "Had I made the hateful comments strongly attributed to me, I would repudiate them without hesitation. I did not make them." But apparently it doesn't matter that the complaint against Kaplan "wasn't well-informed," as his accuser now says. The Law School is scrambling. The university is scrambling. We hear the sort of vacuous apologies that have become familiar in recent years. If anyone was offended, all sorts of folks are officially deeply sorry. What's really offensive is a university that worries more about how students react to distorted rumors of what a professor might have said instead of what was really said or what he was trying to teach his students.

I think McNally has carefully phrased this, but do want to call attention to two things that might be a little hard to see. First, the concession that the email reporting supposed quotes "wasn't well-informed" doesn't mean that their complaint lacks substance. Second, the university has taken an interest in what really happened. While "distorted rumors" may have inflamed emotions, there are still real students who had sat through the class who are talking with administrators about what they had perceived. There is no way to go back and see what happened in a situation that wasn't recorded. In a sense, you could say that anyone's report of what was said in the past is somehow "rumor," but that's not very helpful. Indeed, the students' first-hand reports of what they heard in class are not even hearsay in the legal sense of the term (because it is not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, only to prove what was said). I'm not looking to restir the pot here myself, just linking to McNally because I've been linking to the mainstream media's coverage of this story all along. McNally is saying something very close to what I've been saying, which you can read by clicking the "Kaplan story" label below. There is a serious conflict and a lot of well-intentioned individuals attempting to resolve it right now. I wish them well.

I respond to letters about two NYT columns (on abortion and law school).

The NYT today has three letters on my Feb. 24 column, "Rudy & Mitt Hem & Haw on Abortion." And, check it out, the first one is from Floyd Abrams:

Ann Althouse’s apologia for the so obviously politically crafted shifts in position on abortion by Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney is undeserved.... Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney have a similar problem, one not to their credit. Running as Republicans in liberal Northeastern areas, both sought to reassure pro-choice voters that they had nothing to fear from their election. Now, both seek to appease pro-life Republicans elsewhere in the country by assuring them that their views are truly conservative, that they will appoint “strict constructionist” (read anti-Roe v. Wade) judges and the like. Neither candidate deserves what Ms. Althouse refers to as “decent sympathy” for their expression of complex views, since there is nothing complex about waffling. Who knows, after all, what views either of these politicians ever actually had or has now? All we do know is how far both are prepared to go to be elected.

I certainly concede these political realities. I simply defend their statements in spite of that. Of course, politicians are political. Deal with it! But abortion is a difficult issue and those who craft complex positions deserve some sympathy. Otherwise, you're left with those who stay at the crisp extremes. Basically, I like the sort of liberal(ish) Republican that can succeed in a blue state, and the point of the column is to show that their convoluted statements are not as ridiculous as they appear on first read. The second letter is from Nancy N. Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and she mainly (and unsurprisingly) stakes out the position in favor of abortion rights (which, remember, I support). But let me focus on the last part:

Unless a woman can make her own decisions about her life, she isn’t in control of her future. Allowing states to take away women’s fundamental human rights is not a “part of our freedom,” as Ann Althouse writes, but rather the tyranny she fears.

This refers to my discussion of Giuliani's garbled sounding comment about "how it’s 'part of our freedom' for the legislatures in the various states to make their own decisions about law." I say:

If Roe were overruled, [state] legislatures would decide how to regulate abortion. And decentralized legislation really is fairly called “part of our freedom” because the Constitution’s framers saw the balance of power between the national government and the states as a safeguard against tyranny.

All I'm doing there is explaining the sense of what Giuliani said. It isn't my preference to return the question of abortion to the states, and I don't think it's Giuliani's. But if Roe were overturned, the question would go back to the states, and there is a question what that would be like. What would happen? In thinking about this eventuality, it is helpful to remember that the federalism has long been considered a structural safeguard that has something to do with individual liberty. As I have written here before, there is plenty of reason to be suspicious of how well that kind of safeguard could work, but my point remains: It was not incoherent or bizarre for Giuliani to connect federalism and freedom. The third letter comes from a reader who is pro-life, Richard H. Escobales Jr. He says he "appreciated" my column, but: "I find that the muddled positions of Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney on this critically important issue do not inspire confidence." So, he kind of didn't appreciate my column. And there was a letter yesterday, by David W. Massey, about my Feb. 20 column -- "'A Skullful of Mush'" -- which recommended a revival of Socratic teaching in law school:

There is an underlying premise in Ann Althouse’s plea for traditional law school instruction (“ ‘A Skull Full of Mush,’ ” column, Feb. 20), and that is that law school graduates, drilled in the case method, will leave knowing “how to think like lawyers.” My law school experience long ago taught me to challenge pious premises. If law school teaches students properly, it can only begin to prepare them to confront the unexpected in advising clients, working with other lawyers and arriving at acceptable results. Last year, while celebrating a college reunion, I wandered back to the law school, and in the same classroom where the Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. of my acquaintance practiced his particular brand of intimidation, I observed a different approach: where the professor respectfully listened to volunteers and didn’t dictate to his class how they should think, because he knew that there wasn’t one way for lawyers to do so.

There's a paradox here. Did he learn from the method or not? He admits he did, even as he admires another method. Yet I'm not so sure he learned how to read all that well, because he's seeing something in my column that was not there: an endorsement of the use of intimidation, disrespect, and dictatorial indoctrination. I emphasized that I didn't know any law professors who were the Kingsfield type, so that it was rather nonsensical for us to worry about acting like that fictional character, who the "Paper Chase" author, John Jay Osborn Jr. admitted was an exaggeration. I said that we lawprofs ought to have some respect for our own tradition and concluded:

The students who come into our law schools are adults who have decided that they are ready to spend a tremendous amount of time and money preparing to enter a profession. We show the greatest respect for their individual autonomy if we deny ourselves the comfort of trying to make them happy and teach them what they came to learn: how to think like lawyers.

Note that I didn't say we should try to make them unhappy, only that we default in our central responsibility if we structure class around the idea of trying to make them happy. Actually, I think they are more likely to end up happy if the class teaches them what they need to know. What I was rejecting was a class that is too much about students "telling their stories." I am willing to bet that most students don't want to spend too much of their time listening to the stories other law students have to tell. As for taking volunteers instead of calling on people, I have to confess that I've usually done that in my 20+ years of teaching. But I think it is self-indulgent -- it's much easier! -- and it invariably leaves too few students doing too much of the talking. When you call on students, you find that they really are all quite capable of speaking and responding well to questions, and it is important to demonstrate this and to provide them all with this experience.

"I had to set aside that obsolescent hippie balkiness..."

It's Column #2 in my NYT gig. This one's about some things said by the author of "Paper Chase" and my own experience as a law student and law professor. You'll probably experience this one as exceedingly conservative! 

AND: Here's the full text of Column #1, as it goes to syndication.

NYC morning.

Yesterday was the "Writing About the Law" conference and the first deadline for the NYT column, and now, it's Saturday in New York. Time for a little blogging. I've got my tiny tray from room service, a small carafe of coffee and an orange juice, for which I signed the bill for $18 without joy or regret. I want to be in my room, I need coffee, and that's what it costs.

I'll do some NY things today, and at 5 I'm doing the meet-up with readers of this blog. (Email me if you want to be included.) I still have some notes from the conference which I'm going to use in a few posts. You'll have to wait! (Unbloggy, I know.)

I'll do a pretty substantial post on the lunch talk from John Jay Osborn (the author of "The Paper Chase"). 

For now -- because I want to get to the morning news -- let me post some photos from the dinner the night before the conference. We were in a cool basement room at the City Hall Restaurant... honoring Jethro K. Lieberman's book "The Litigious Society":

   

At my table, the glamorous and charming Nadine Strossen (of ACLU fame):

 

Also at the table, two very nice New York Law School students, John Indeck (left) and George Esposito (right):

I expect big things of these guys.

A new dimension of law school nurturing. The worst thing about that Adam Liptak article (discussed in the previous post) is that it presents Concord Law School as distinguishing itself from traditional law schools by not using the Socratic Method. Liptak writes that "many students find the method terrifying" and then quotes Concord's dean as saying that his school has a "more nurturing atmosphere" and a Concord student "welcoming" that nurturing: "They don't think we need to be yelled at, screamed at or scared." Which of the existing non-virtual law schools are using the yelling, screaming, scary type of Socratic Method? I'd really like to know! An innovative idea for a new law school would to use an old style hardcore Socratic Method approach. It's actually hard to find Kingsfield-type lawprofs any more; everybody's already competing to be the most nurturing. I'd like to see a school compete for students and faculty by offering a retro hardcore method. A virtual law school brings a new dimension of nurturing: it lets you stay home altogether. But the fear of the classroom that is just a fear of speaking at all in class and of being challenged with hard questions: that is a fear that needs to be overcome! Would you hire a lawyer who had not been willing to face down that fear? Attacking the nonexistent Paper Chase-type law school is beside the point.