More on UF Rent Boy Kerfluffle

Over yonder.

Tenure, Academic Freedom, Broadcasting, and Bill Inserts

You do not hear much about academic freedom from law professors because they rarely say anything controversial that anyone hears about. In fact, wouldn't it be far more interesting if someone were listening to us? It may seem odd that there is so little controversy given the iron clad protection we have. The reasons for the quiet, I think, can be traced to the fact that straying ideologically or culturally from the mainstream (of law professors that is) means you may be labeled "difficult" or "uncollegial" and these are career killers as much a being labeled a racist, whether true or not.

In fact, what an upside down situation it is. The biggest threats to academic freedom are clearly the professors themselves. Many scrutinize candidates for hiring and tenure to make sure they will "play ball" and I do not mean Moneyball. They want to make sure you are "tolerant" but what they mean is will you tolerate their intolerance.

What also concerns me is that, in state schools at least, faculty use taxpayer money to promote their only political agendas. Pleeeze do not tell me it's a matter of academic freedom. Academic freedom is what economists call a free good -- my speaking out hardly interferes with anyone else's. On the other hand, resources are limited and promoting one view with University resources means, by definition, that the resources are not available for something else.

Given the political inclinations of the vast majority of law faculty it reminds me of issues about equal time that arose in the context of telecommunications and then later in the context of inserts in utility bills. (The terms Red Lion, Consolidated Edison (or was it Central Hudson) and Pacific Gas and Electric come to mind but I am too busy now pushing my own agenda to look it up.) The idea in these instances was that speakers had special access due to a government granted privilege.

Of course, those wanting parity in those cases eventually lost to the incumbents. Nevertheless, law professors at state law schools are like a combination of broadcast licensees and public utilities. They are permitted to promote their personal views using the money of others. When that happens shouldn't the institution be required to subsidize as well those who dissent? Don't you just have a hunch that those with the political philosophy that led them to press for equal access or time in those other contexts would not hear of such a thing when it comes to their own special status?

Shameless self-promotion.

See here.

Elite Relief

If there is way to open doors for elites while closing them to others, law schools will find a way. And in the process they make some really questionable decisions from a economic perspective.

Take a recent policy adopted by UF. We now have a program of hiring people with "outstanding academic credentials" and with little or no scholarly record or teaching experience." (Yes it sounds like every other entry level hire.) They then work here with a reduced teaching load and summer grants for 1-4 semesters and, after our careful mentoring, go out to be recruited by other schools.

I'll give you one guess as to what outstanding academic credentials means to people who do law school hiring. It means people who have records like their own -- expensive and elite schools. (We stick closely to the Justice Scalia rule that silk purses are more readily made from elite grads than from your crummy old top of the class at say Wisconsin or Florida.) In this case, the candidates for relief are ones who had every conceivable advantage already and did not get a tenure track position by going through the meat market process. So what this appears to be is a relief program for elites who otherwise could not find a job.

I cannot comment on the relative productivity of our most recent hires who came from elite schools and seem to be doing well because we have no one here hired in the last six years, at least as I recall, who did not go the elite route and fit the profile even if it meant dipping pretty low in the class. As a general matter, however, at least, there is no correlation between elite credentials of any kind and productivity. In fact, it the may be inversely related.

So now we are taking it on ourselves to train elites who did not quite make the grade in the meat market. And then, after the investment is made and they are "all prettied up" out they out for someone else to hire. In other words we recoup none of the investment.

Wouldn't it make more sense to see if we can prepare potential law professors who did not have every opportunity to make the grade and fell short. Say someone ranked high from a decent state law school. Our "good deeds," as usual, extend only to those who look and think like us, no matter how conventional that may be.

I've been told we are doing this as part of a moral obligation to avoid free riding on other law schools. In the scheme of moral obligations that is an odd one. We are a State institution and have a duty to our stakeholders. Subsidizing the already privileged would not be ranked high, if ranked at all, among our moral obligations. Perhaps if we hired our own graduates it would make more sense but, although we pay others to hire them, we are apparently above that.

Maybe we plan to pay the relief candidates a significantly lower wage and this is a move to lower our teaching costs. In this way they "repay" us for our investment. This would not change any of the above but it would shift the silliness balance a bit to the other side. This, however was not part of the pitch.

Cross posted at classbias