From the WSJ Law Blog:
... in an upcoming essay in Stanford Law & Policy Review, [Washington University at St. Louis Law Professor Brian] Tamanaha [focuses on] what he describes as the hypocrisy of his fellow liberal colleagues, whom he says have milked the system and turned their backs on debt-loaded students.
He writes:
If liberals are to be true to our professed values, we must critically examine our own conduct, however painful and embarrassing it might be. We cannot speak truth to power yet not to ourselves. [P]rogressive law professors, I charge, have profited from a system of legal education with harmful consequences to individuals and society—while claiming (and believing) that they were fighting the system.
He faults left-wing academic groups, like the Society of American Law Teachers, for taking a “a strong and unbending stance against” changes to accreditation standards — particularly tenure and other job-protection mandates — that he argues would slow the rise of tuition. (The co-presidents of the law society declined comment.)
But instead, Mr. Tamanaha says, his liberal colleagues have ignored the tuition problem:
Had professors on a faculty banded together to resist tuition increases, with the support of national organizations, the increases might have been tempered. Law professor organizations and law faculties nationwide sprang into action to effectively fight proposals to remove job protection from accreditation standards. Liberal law professors could have engaged in similar actions to resist tuition increases, but we did nothing.
Explaining why, he writes:
Tuition increases meant yearly salary raises, research budgets to buy books and laptops, additional time off from teaching to write (or to do whatever we like), traveling to conferences domestically and abroad, rooms in fine hotels, and dining out with old friends. A sweet ride it has been.
In contrast, I suppose, he thinks conservatives like me are happy just to enjoy the sweet ride. And, in fairness, I don't lose much sleep about living the law prof life. But then I teach my students something useful, instead of teaching them about speaking truth to power (whatever the hell that means), so I actually earn my money.
