The term “fascism” and its conjugations have been thrown out often on the road to Americans voting for a second season of The Apprentice: White House Edition, but it is rarer to see someone take a moment to sit with a (proposed) policy change and explain how it fits into the conservative revolution happening in front of us. In The 14 Characteristics Of Fascism, Lawrence Britt laid out — you guessed it — 14 characteristics that he saw shared by several fascist regimes. For now let’s focus on the 11th, disdain for intellectuals and the arts:
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
This has been happening in real time for years now. Book bans and banning the darker parts of American history from being taught in classrooms have been going on for a while now, but the attack on tenure is a major step against academics. Tenure means nothing if it doesn’t protect professors from being fired for expressing their political opinions. Not the casual Wikipedia-anchored racism you’d expect of a drunk aunt at the Thanksgiving table a la Amy Wax, but legitimate, fleshed-out thoughts about the politics of our time. Maura Finkelstein was fired for sharing an anti-Zionist post on Instagram in May of last year. Law professor Ken Levy was recently removed from his classes over political comments. These retaliations didn’t portend well for the sanctity of tenure, and the bills being introduced Texas and North Dakota definitely aren’t helping. Forbes has coverage:
[P]erhaps emboldened by the re-election of Donald Trump, who’s often ridiculed colleges as being instruments of liberal indoctrination, two states — Texas and North Dakota — have introduced bills that would ban tenure, and Ohio is reconsidering a bill that faculty fear could weaken tenure’s protections.
Law isn’t some abstract force without origin, it arises from a need to regulate and engage with the world as we are confronted with it. It is no surprise that teaching the law lends itself to contemporary relevant events. Say you’re in a Criminal Law class and getting cold called on People v. Goetz. It’s a 1986 case where a guy on a train responded to being asked for money by shooting four people and claiming self-defense. There was a clear racial element to the case — Goetz was White and the four men he shot were Black. During the trial, he was hailed as a hero for what he did. It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination for the fact pattern to make you think of the recent case where Daniel Penny killed Jordan Neely after complaining that he was hungry and thirsty.
As a professor, do you ask your students if the outcome could have been different if instead of four Black men Goetz shot four White women who were asking him for change? If the jury would buy Penny’s “I was protecting the people” argument if Neely were a plainclothes Biglaw associate who was going through a mental episode? Can you ask them that? Is it worth risking the line of questioning being framed as imposing “wokeness” on your captive students or forcing opinions down their throats? Could a Con Law professor give their honest assessment of a president using an executive order to mandate something that explicitly flies in the face of, say, the Fourteenth Amendment? Would that be a lecture on the separation of powers or a reason to remove the professor from the classroom?
On November 26th of last year, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry openly called for LSU professor Nick Bryner to be punished for commenting on Trump’s policies and the people who voted for him. This should read as an obvious attempt to stifle free speech and censor professors for making political commentary on the sort of material they are literally there to teach on. That said, the number of Jeff Landry types could grow and gain teeth over the next few years if protections on campus free speech continue to wane.
States Once Again Considering Bills To Ban Or Limit Faculty Tenure [Forbes]
Earlier: Tenured Law Professor Allegedly Removed From Class Over Political Comments
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
The post The Attacks On Tenure Could Change How Law Professors Run Their Classrooms appeared first on Above the Law.
The term “fascism” and its conjugations have been thrown out often on the road to Americans voting for a second season of The Apprentice: White House Edition, but it is rarer to see someone take a moment to sit with a (proposed) policy change and explain how it fits into the conservative revolution happening in front of us. In The 14 Characteristics Of Fascism, Lawrence Britt laid out — you guessed it — 14 characteristics that he saw shared by several fascist regimes. For now let’s focus on the 11th, disdain for intellectuals and the arts:
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
This has been happening in real time for years now. Book bans and banning the darker parts of American history from being taught in classrooms have been going on for a while now, but the attack on tenure is a major step against academics. Tenure means nothing if it doesn’t protect professors from being fired for expressing their political opinions. Not the casual Wikipedia-anchored racism you’d expect of a drunk aunt at the Thanksgiving table a la Amy Wax, but legitimate, fleshed-out thoughts about the politics of our time. Maura Finkelstein was fired for sharing an anti-Zionist post on Instagram in May of last year. Law professor Ken Levy was recently removed from his classes over political comments. These retaliations didn’t portend well for the sanctity of tenure, and the bills being introduced Texas and North Dakota definitely aren’t helping. Forbes has coverage:
[P]erhaps emboldened by the re-election of Donald Trump, who’s often ridiculed colleges as being instruments of liberal indoctrination, two states — Texas and North Dakota — have introduced bills that would ban tenure, and Ohio is reconsidering a bill that faculty fear could weaken tenure’s protections.
Law isn’t some abstract force without origin, it arises from a need to regulate and engage with the world as we are confronted with it. It is no surprise that teaching the law lends itself to contemporary relevant events. Say you’re in a Criminal Law class and getting cold called on People v. Goetz. It’s a 1986 case where a guy on a train responded to being asked for money by shooting four people and claiming self-defense. There was a clear racial element to the case — Goetz was White and the four men he shot were Black. During the trial, he was hailed as a hero for what he did. It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination for the fact pattern to make you think of the recent case where Daniel Penny killed Jordan Neely after complaining that he was hungry and thirsty.
As a professor, do you ask your students if the outcome could have been different if instead of four Black men Goetz shot four White women who were asking him for change? If the jury would buy Penny’s “I was protecting the people” argument if Neely were a plainclothes Biglaw associate who was going through a mental episode? Can you ask them that? Is it worth risking the line of questioning being framed as imposing “wokeness” on your captive students or forcing opinions down their throats? Could a Con Law professor give their honest assessment of a president using an executive order to mandate something that explicitly flies in the face of, say, the Fourteenth Amendment? Would that be a lecture on the separation of powers or a reason to remove the professor from the classroom?
On November 26th of last year, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry openly called for LSU professor Nick Bryner to be punished for commenting on Trump’s policies and the people who voted for him. This should read as an obvious attempt to stifle free speech and censor professors for making political commentary on the sort of material they are literally there to teach on. That said, the number of Jeff Landry types could grow and gain teeth over the next few years if protections on campus free speech continue to wane.
States Once Again Considering Bills To Ban Or Limit Faculty Tenure [Forbes]
Earlier: Tenured Law Professor Allegedly Removed From Class Over Political Comments
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
