A reader who practices law in Louisville, Kentucky, e-mails with a story of the Law of Merited Impossibility manifesting at the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law.
The other day, Luke Milligan, a law professor there, wrote an op-ed in the local newspaper decrying the way the school is becoming ideologized. Excerpts:
Since 1846 the law school at the University of Louisville has provided nonpartisan space for individuals to teach, discuss, and research matters of law and public policy. Despite the thousands of partisans who’ve walked its halls, the law school as an institution has remained nonpartisan, preserving its neutrality, and refusing to embrace an ideological or political identity.
Unfortunately, this long run of institutional neutrality seems headed for an abrupt end. Promotional materials for the law school now proclaim its institutional commitment to “progressive values” and “social justice.” Incoming students and faculty are told that, when it comes to the big issues of the day, the law school takes the “progressive” side.
The plan, in short, is to give the state-funded law school an “ideological brand.” (The Interim dean says it will help fundraising and student recruitment.) In 2014, the law faculty voted — over strong objection — to commit the institution to “social justice.” Now we’re at it again, seeking to brand ourselves “the nation’s first compassionate law school.”
A liberal law professor shot back:
Nevertheless, I found myself not only surprised, but deeply disappointed and frankly embarrassed that my colleague, Professor Luke Milligan, wrote a misleading opinion column in this space on Jan. 13, objecting to the proposal to have the Brandeis School of Law partner with the city, and many of our leading corporate and civic institutions, as part of the Compassionate Louisville campaign.
The views Professor Milligan expressed completely misrepresented both the nature of the Compassionate Louisville campaign and the law school’s commitment to it.The premise of Professor Milligan’s polemic was that identifying the law school as a compassionate institution is somehow a “partisan” stance that takes sides in ideological wars in which he believes a law school should not take sides. I’m sure that community leaders such as Brown-Forman, Metro United Way, Spalding University, YMCA of Greater Louisville, Norton Healthcare, Guardiacare, KentuckyOne Health, Sacred Heart Academy, Yum! Brands, the University of Louisville Medical School, and dozens more will be quite surprised to learn that by partnering with the Compassionate Louisville initiative, they have all taken sides in the culture wars or been somehow partisan.
Equally surprised, we must assume, are the hundreds of cities across the nation (including such bastions of liberal orthodoxy as Fayetteville, Huntsville, Dallas, Tulsa, and Winston-Salem) that have also become Compassionate Communities, only to learn that they are also part of this partisan, ideological plot to impose compassion. But according to Professor Milligan, that’s just what they’ve all done.
This is an astonishingly sad way to look at the world – and especially to see the notion of compassion, as being the exclusive preserve of one ideology. I do not believe it ever occurred to anyone who proposed this at the law school or voted for it that it had any ideological or partisan content at all, or that supporting it somehow sent a message that a commitment to compassion would, could or should exclude anyone based on party or ideology.
A third professor said no, the law school really is pushing leftism:
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 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.
Well, yesterday, the law school faculty voted overwhelmingly to join the “compassion” campaign. From the newspaper report:
Professor Sam Marcosson, who defended the resolution in an online commentary, said that faculty considered adding respect for ideological diversity in the resolution but found no dictionary that defined compassion as including that.
“It is about empathy for the pain and suffering of others,” he said.
Oh, brother. More:
Professor Manning Warren, the only professor besides Weaver to speak against the resolution, described himself as a liberal Democrat but complained that compassion is “a loaded term.”
“Does it mean you feel sorry for the 16-year-old girl who is raped,” he asked, “or her unborn baby?”
“It just doesn’t make sense to vote on something when we don’t know what it means,” he said.
Well, we do know what it means: it means a left-wing social agenda. Given how Big Business stomped religious liberty in the Indiana RFRA debacle, it is risible to cite corporate support for stuff like this as evidence that it is non-partisan, or in any way conservative.
Liberals use “compassion” and “social justice” the way conservatives of another era would have used “patriotism”: as a moralistic cudgel to demonize points of view they would rather not have to hear. “Surely, professor, you love America, yes? Then how can you possibly object to ____?”
Prof. Milligan said this is where “compassion” has already led:
We’re already experiencing the fallout at the law school. In the name of “social justice” and “compassion,” students were instructed on Day 1 of law school to rise and make public declarations regarding their race, religion, and sexual orientation. Under the Interim dean’s gaze, new students came out as gay, the devoutly religious were told to cheer for atheism, and evangelicals were called on to applaud the LGBT community.
State-sponsored “compassion” and “social justice” left students wondering if they’d need to sacrifice personal privacy, political values, and deeply held religious convictions in order to succeed at law school.
Imagine being compelled on the first day of law school in 1957 to stand and make public declarations of your politics, your patriotism, and your view on communism. How welcome do you think dissenters from “100% Americanism” would have fared? How do you think law students asked in those days to declare their Judaism or their atheism would have felt that day?
For the SJWs on faculty, in university administrations, and among the students, this is all about will to power. And note well that these lawyers, indoctrinated in “compassion,” who are going to be the judges of tomorrow.
This is how it happens. Remember, folks: “It’s not going to happen, and when it does, you people will deserve it.”