HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: University Of Louisville Law Professor: Law School ‘Veered to partisan agenda.’
I agree with the idea that compassion is a worthwhile and understandable objective. Indeed, it is an essential part of life. If the movement toward a “compassionate organization” were nothing more than that, who could object? However, to suggest that the law school has not adopted a partisan social agenda, and that it has not labeled non-liberals “outsiders,” is (at the very least) wrong and misleading.
There is ample evidence that the law school has veered to a partisan agenda. In a prior commentary, I discussed the diversity training conducted by the law school in collaboration with the Vice President for Diversity. At those events, faculty, staff and students were instructed to identify their religious beliefs, sexual orientation and disabilities, and attendees were ordered to clap enthusiastically (it was made quite clear that silence or even polite clapping was simply not acceptable).
Even more troubling, Professor Milligan is absolutely correct about the fact that a leftist agenda affects the classroom environment at the Brandeis School of Law. Deeply troubled by the liberal branding of the law school, and the adoption of the “social justice” mandate, a colleague had the temerity to make the following statement to his students on the final day of class last semester:
“Don’t let people here—students or faculty—pressure you to compromise your political, legal, social, or religious views. Many of our graduates look back and regret having been sheepish in expressing and developing their political views when they were at this law school. Conservative views have an equal place alongside liberal views at the Brandeis School of Law. I don’t care what the Dean says. I don’t care what your Con Law professors say. And on this point, neither should you. This is your education—not the Dean’s, not the faculty’s. Develop your political and legal views freely while you’re here. Take care. Good luck on the exam.”
What extraordinary ideas! Students should be encouraged to think for themselves. Not everyone need blindly adhere to the faculty’s (or the dean’s) liberal values.
Given the current repressive climate at the law school, perhaps the colleague should have anticipated a negative reaction to his statement. However, I doubt that he could have remotely imagined what actually happened. When the interim dean found out about the statement, she did not adopt a strong pro-free speech stance, or emphasize the importance of free speech and the exploration of ideas in a university environment. Nor did she, as one might also have expected, speak to the faculty member in order to ascertain the facts.
Heaven forbid that she follow Justice Brandeis’ admonition that “knowledge is essential to understanding and understanding should precede judging!” Instead, that very day, she marched over to file a complaint with university officials regarding the statement, and she then sent the faculty member an e-mail ordering him to schedule an appointment with the officials.
Read the whole thing.