We teach our children to study hard, do well, get into a good college and become whatever they dream of becoming. We teach them that if they follow the path, there will be a pot of gold at the end. And statistically, that’s generally true. with a long list of caveats. So why are there so many radicalized, angry, miserable Ph.D.s out there?

In August, Michael Isaacson, an adjunct instructor of economics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, wrote on Twitter, “Some of y’all might think it sucks being an anti-fascist teaching at John Jay College but I think it’s a privilege to teach future dead cops.” Though he later said he was not wishing for his students’ deaths, but merely predicting some would die, his post was roundly condemned. He received death threats and was suspended from his job, ostensibly in the interest of campus safety.

There have been similar cases in recent weeks. A sociologist holding a temporary position at the University of Tampa was fired after tweeting that Hurricane Harvey was karmic payback for Republican-voting Texans. Officials at California State University, Fresno, dismissed a history lecturerfor tweeting that “Trump must hang.” And an adjunct instructor in gender studies — who had already been fired from Rutgers — lost his fall employment offer from Montclair State University after the revelation that he’d tweeted about his wish to see President Trump shot.

This gives a somewhat false impression. It’s not that these aren’t accurate examples, but a few anecdotes don’t make for pervasive craziness. According to Colby College sociology prof, Neil Gross, these examples share one common theme, they’re all adjuncts. Continue reading →

A public defender in San Francisco PD Jeff Adachi’s office, John Paul Passaglia, put his arm around his client. It might have been viewed as a heart-warming gesture, but Judge Ross Moody wasn’t feeling it.

John Paul Passaglia, an attorney with Adachi’s office, faces five days in jail and a $1,000 fine for allegedly failing to step away from his client after Judge Ross Moody ordered him to do so in a hearing Sept. 14.

Passaglia said he did not defy the judge’s orders, but that he was in shock and “reacted to an unethical demand” when his client was allegedly wrongfully taken in custody during the hearing. His client remained in jail Friday.

To the extent the story is told, Passaglia’s client, Michael Bayanos, was holding up the machinery of justice by not pleading quickly enough. Continue reading →

Remember Liz Phipps Soeiro? No? She doesn’t sing or dance. She doesn’t tell jokes on TV. Chances are that outside of a room in a school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, no one knew the name. Now they do.

Dear Mrs. Trump,

Thank you for the ten Dr. Seuss titles that you sent my school library in recognition of this year’s National Read a Book Day. (Sent second-day air, no less! That must have been expensive.)

This was the start of an “open letter” published at The Horn Book, a site for children’s books. Someone sent ten Dr. Seuss books in Melania Trump’s name to Soeiro for her school’s library, and she responded by lecturing and chastising the First Lady for the gift. Sent second-day air, no less! Continue reading →

There isn’t much point to holding a protest in your basement, as there’s no one there to appreciate your passion or point. This is why people take protests to the streets, where they are entitled to express their grievances. Yes, there are limits imposed, of dubious constitutional merit, but that aside, the message of protest is conveyed.

But then, if the purpose is to let people know of your grievance, then why not the mall? After all, that’s where the people are, plus it’s indoors, climate controlled and has a food court. So, to the Galleria they went.

Like many mass arrests in St. Louis County, the events leading up to a police roundup at the Galleria Mall last Saturday began with a peaceful protest.

Demonstrators gathered and marched at the mall, located just outside the city with the highest rate of police killings in the U.S, in response to the not-guilty verdict of former police officer Jason Stockley. They were there to call out law enforcement’s ubiquitous use of violence against Black bodies without consequence — to disrupt business as usual. But the nonviolent act ended with a militarized police response, the overnight detention of 22 people, and numerous criminal charges.

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KC Johnson twitted a survey conducted by YouGov for the Bucknell Institute for Public Policy on public perceptions of higher education. The results are . . . surpisingly normal. By normal, I mean that for all the shrieking of the fringes on either side, and despite the ordinary breadth of belief in how best to accomplish our goals, most of us want the same thing.

While the survey covers far more than this mere slice, for the purpose of this post I’ll focus on attitudes toward the Title IX sex tribunals, having written at length about the issues.

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Life moves fast these days. It was only Wednesday when Judge Kopf chose as an example of bootlicking the very twitter-popular justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Don Willett. By Thursday, Justice Willett had been nominated to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by Trump. Coincidence?

Judge Kopf’s issue wasn’t Justice Willett’s brilliance, his integrity, and certainly not his sense of humor.

But Willett’s Twitter stuff is thin gruel. I readily agree he is funny, that he paints an accessible face on the Texas Supreme Court, that he is sometimes heartwarming, and that he is always a loyal homer for his God and our America. But what does Willett contribute to a substantive dialogue between the bench, the bar, and the public when he tweets?

Not much, in my estimation. Even though Judge Willett is brilliant, I surmise that he doesn’t want to defend himself on social media from substantive yet penetrating criticism of his libertarian judicial views. Given his talents, that is a shame.

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The word went out that there would be students protesting, disrupting, a talk by Alan Dershowitz at Columbia University. So Dersh took to the Daily News in a pre-emptive strike.

On Wednesday evening, I am scheduled to engage in a public conversation at Columbia University about the prospects for peace in the Middle East. The question — a critical one at a time when far too many campuses are hostile to ideas that challenge existing dogma — is whether I’ll be heard or shouted down.

By Wednesday evening, he means yesterday as of this writing. This post awaited the talk to see whether Dersh would get the Milo treatment. As of this morning, I can’t find anything to suggest anybody protested, no less disrupted, his talk.

I am a centrist liberal who voted for Hillary Clinton. I support a two-state solution. I have long opposed Israel’s settlement policies. I am not one of those hard-right provocateurs who come to campus in order to stoke the flames of controversy (though they too, have First Amendment rights). I am a retired professor who wants to contribute to the education of students with regard to a complex, divisive issue. Continue reading →

This is going to piss off many of you, but consider that Salt Lake City detective Jeff Payne, who was universally condemned for his arrest of nurse Alex Wubbels, isn’t an animal, a terrible human being, a bad cop. Consider instead that he was a pretty ordinary cop, following orders, trying to perform what he understood to be his duty. Consider also that on another day, he would save a kitten from a tree, walk an old woman across the street and play b-ball with orphan kids.

Consider that Jeff Payne was a good father to his children, a loving husband, a pillar of the community and a charitable human being. But the only thing we know about Payne is what he did to Wubbels, and since that was awful, he’s awful. Some will argue that if he’s awful, that’s all they need to know. Some will argue that his awfulness reflects the systemic problem with cops, flexing their muscle at the expense of other human beings, equally (if not more so) worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. Some will argue that Payne embodied what’s wrong with policing, and no kittens in trees make that go away.

All of these things are fair arguments. But Stephen Hartney, president of the Salt Lake Police Association, didn’t make these arguments or refute them. Instead, he went by the book. Continue reading →

A bootlicker is an obsequious or servile person, so says the Oxford Living Dictionary.  It is an “Americanism dating back to 1835-45” according to another dictionary. “Foot-licker” in the same sense dates back to around 1610. Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary (2017).

There are others words like “butt-kisser” that may be substituted if you lack my slavish devotion to taste and decorum. But you need to be careful about substituting “butt-kisser” for “bootlicker.”  As I shall next show pictorially, there are subtle differences.

Thus, for this post, I will use the term “bootlicker” because it fits better for those who have studied law and are thus trained to understand nuance.[i] Having solved, I hope to your satisfaction, the definitional issue, I now turn to substance. Continue reading →

*Yes, it’s not Tuesday, but days of the week are mere social constructs. Get over it.

The devastation in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria isn’t merely extreme, but different than that which occured on the mainland. Look at the costs imposed by the Jones Act, which should be repealed, and at least suspended until the Americans on our isle are returned to normalcy, and the logistics of getting aid to PR given that it’s an island.

As an aside, this would be an opportunity to donate to a worthy cause. Not the Red Cross, but there are other, localized organizations, who can be trusted to put the money to its intended use.

And then came a twit from Fault Lines’ Ken Womble in response to a twit from his FL colleague, Caleb Kruckenberg.

Introduce a bill for Puerto Rican statehood. Now.

— Ken Womble (@BrooklynWomble) September 26, 2017

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