LAW FOLLIES: Koppelman On The Yale And UIC Law School Controversies.

Faculty susceptibility to administrative sanction is at the center of the highly politicized culture wars playing out across universities in the last five years or so. Law schools are no exception. In the last year, Northwestern Law’s Andrew Koppelman has emerged as a sort of monitor of what he sees as flagrant instances of administrative overreach. “Many administrators,” he told me, “are cowards who are pre-disposed to grovel before student demands. The way to make cowards behave appropriately is to give them fears in the other direction.”

Indeed. But I think he’s way too generous with regard to the Yale Law administration, possibly because he’s a Yale alumnus. The Yale administrators, by all accounts, didn’t just make bad judgments. They tried to blackmail people into making false charges, among other crimes.