A Law School Lacked and Lost James Allan

Things at USD law school this second time were not quite the same. A bit before my arrival, Alexander had written a short newspaper article with Amy Wax on the virtues of middle-class and bourgeois values finish high school, show up to work on time, hold off having kids till you re working and have a reliable partner, that sort of thing. I d seen a draft before it went into the Philadelphia Enquirer and thought it wholly unobjectionable. This was just a listing of the Protestant work ethic virtues that experience showed delivered good consequences to anyone who signed up to them. But some had insisted on seeing the piece through the prism of identity politics. Some colleagues at USD had attacked Alexander. Others had come to his defence. 

When I got there, I learned that what you might describe as the conservative wing of the law school was now largely being kept off key law school committees, most importantly the hiring committee. For me, the 2019 sabbatical was as excellent as the one six years before. But I sensed this island of comparative tolerance for iconoclastic, nonconformist, dissident save time and call it conservative viewpoints had noticeably shrunk. And if future hires were to be judged through the prism of diversity and inclusion and not on straight-up merit, well, you could guess how many conservatives would be hired. The USD law school would slowly become like all the other 200-odd accredited US law schools where Democrat-donating and voting law profs outnumber Republicans by double figures to one. This little sanctuary of open-mindedness would wither and die.

A few weeks ago, I learned that some of the stalwarts of the USD law school, well-known and long-standing professors of law who certainly could not be described as progressives, had all put in their notice to take up the three-year retirement option. USD was losing Larry Alexander. Losing Steve Smith. Losing former dean Kevin Cole. Losing Gail Heriot. All of them had endured enough. Yes, there are some nonconformists still there who haven t announced their take-up of the retirement pathway, and will battle on. But we can t kid ourselves. As that unexpected sanctuary for dissident conservative outlooks, USD was in its death throes. 

via lawliberty.org

Alas, it’s all true.