The University of Illinois College of Law has had a tough run in recent years. The school was hammered by an admissions scandal after it allegedly admitted unqualified or less competitive students to secure jobs or to please powerful politicians. Now it has been hit with a public censure and $250,000 fine by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar for intentionally reporting and publishing false admissions data in six out of the last 10 years.
Indiana University Southeast near Louisville, Kentucky is at the center of a free speech controversy over a school code that bars students from expressing opinions on campus except in designated free speech zones. The code flips the presumption of higher education: students must generally refrain from free speech and even apply for the right to express opinions. The code, first promulgated in 2004, is being challenged as an example of how universities are cracking down on free speech.
This past week Professor Turley had two posts regarding the innocent victim of a police shooting: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/07/17/florida-police-pound-on-wrong-door-looking-for-suspect-without-identifying-themselves-thenves-then-shoot-and-kill-innocent-man-who-answers-the-door-with-weapon/#comments and http://jonathanturley.org/2012/07/20/report-police-allegedly-increased-suspects-alleged-crime-after-shooting-third-person/#more-51907 These can fairly be called the latest installments of an ongoing series that details deaths and injuries sustained by people who are the victims of policing errors. There were a fair number of comments all lamenting yet another example of careless police work, in tandem with a propensity to shoot first and hope for the best. After awhile the comments petered out because this instance is but one of many that have been publicized by Professor Turley. He tries to focus attention on what seems to be blatant disregard for the rights of individual citizens. After all, what does one say after expressing their outrage at egregious behavior and impotently raging against the expected ensuing cover-ups? Emotionally, I personally feel horror and outrage when something like this happens and I desire justice in the form of stiff punishment for the avoidable errors that took an innocent life. Yet this occurs time and again as outrage simmers and yet another story captures our attention. It seems that nothing is ever really done with the macro-cosmic problem, even when on the individual level, though very occasionally, the people responsible are held to account. When I thought about the issue of police killing the wrong person it occurred to me that this is not something that has recently developed in our country, or indeed the rest of the world. In fact it seems to me that such occurrences represent a norm of human history that stems from how the entire concept of policing first came about. Policing had its origins in protecting wealth, property and the status quo of autocratic authority. Continue reading “Collateral Damage of the Police”→
Author note: This is the fifth in a series about the child sexual abuse scandal at The Pennsylvania State University that helped bring down iconic football coach Joe Paterno and three top officials at the premier public college in Pennsylvania.
The Magician
Penn State’s ousted president and amateur magician, Graham Spanier, enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for secrecy while leading the state’s flagship public university. In one instance, Spanier became incensed when he learned that the Harrisburg Patriot-News had obtained the salaries of the top PSU officials — including Joe Paterno — from the state pension board. (Paterno had consistently made mention of the fact that he received around $500,000 per year as a coach, donating much of it back to PSU. Many prominent FBS football coaches make up to ten times that amount and it appears Paterno was fudging a bit on his salary.) Spanier embarked on a five-year fight to block publication of the salaries, taking the case through the entire appeals process and up to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Spanier lost at every level. Undaunted and against the odds, he successfully lobbied Pennsylvania state lawmakers to reject closing the loophole which exempted college employees salaries from the state’s “right-to-know” law. With that legislative prestidigitation, he just made the problem disappear.
Amber Estes (left) has submitted an article to The University of Georgia student newspaper entitled “How to find that perfect husband in college.” Estes writes that the four years of college are “four years to find a husband” and provides six easy to follow steps.
Step 2: Spend your free time casually moseying around the law school.
Step 4: On your first date, STAY CLASSY. A man won’t get down on one knee for a woman who is overly willing to get down on both of hers.
For many years in the late 60’s and through the 70’s a group of twenty five friends and co-workers would camp for a weekend on an island in the middle of Long Lake, in the Adirondack mountains. At the time these were the people who were closest to me, even more so than my family. The island we camped on in the middle of this magnificent lake was as beautiful and tranquil as you might imagine it to be. You could only reach it by boat and the isolation added to the feeling of peace that settled over us when we were there. An old mansion had once stood on a rise looking out at the Lake. All that remained of it was a huge fireplace and chimney. We would cook large dinners as twilight descended. As we ate our meals more wood was piled on the cooking fire until it was a large blazing bonfire and we would get high, talk, gaze into the fire’s ever changing shapes and play/sing music as night descended, sharing the communion and the warmth of our interrelationship.
As I recall those long weekends four decades past, I recognize that we were taking part in a ritual as old as the beginnings of human society. The sharing of a communal meal, the comfort of close companionship, primitive music and a roaring fire keeping away the terrors of the night. These earliest of human rituals developed the beginnings of that which we call society. Ritual as I define it is a combination of repetitive actions, rites and procedures performed by two or more individuals that provides comforting feeling and a sense of shared togetherness. The behaviors tap into the most universal of human archetypes and thus are easily recognized as reassuring by participants and by groups. I’m using my own definition here because if you Google “ritual defined” you will get a multiplicity of definitions, all with some precision, that in the end make the explanation of ritual more complex than it should be, hence my own hubris in creating my own definition.
As millennia passed the communal campfire developed into a complex mixture of ritual that bonded people together and like the earliest ones provide the comfort of safety in a fear ridden world. My generation of hipsters abjured the rituals we inherited, even as we created rituals of our own. It is a fact of humanity’s existence within society’s that communal rituals are needed to bond us together and that the breakdown of some of the binding rituals of American society, have separated us and have made our lives more chaotic and less personally meaningful. Let me explain what I perceive. Continue reading “A Meditation on Ritual”→
Islamic militants destroyed two of the historic tombs at the famous 14th century Djingareyber mosque in Timbuktu this week. The militants from the Ansar Dine group say the centuries-old shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam are idolatrous. In the meantime, some Egyptian Muslim extremists are following the victory by the Muslim Brotherhood with demands that the pyramids be destroyed for the same reason. Obviously these are extreme groups within the Muslim community. This later story is based on accounts coming from various sites but appear based on the same claimed translation of sites, though some have called it a hoax.
You would think that the claimed discovery of the Higgs boson — or God’s Particle — would lead to a new round of celebration in Pakistan over its own Nobel laureate, Adbus Salam. After all, Salam helped develop the theoretical framework that led to the apparent discovery of the subatomic particle. However, before laying the ground work for discovering the God Particle, Salam picked the wrong God in the view of many Pakistanis. Salam, who died in 1996, has been stricken from school textbooks and public acknowledgments because he was a member of the Ahmadi sect that is viewed by Muslims as heretical.
I am a regular subscriber to the website WhoWhatWhywritten by investigative journalist Russ Baker. Recently he ran a response by one of his readers, Dave Parker, to a video Russ posted of Nick Hanuer, a billionaire venture capitalist who gave a talk atTED, which is an acronym for the non-profit, Technology, Entertainment and Design, TED holds conferences around the world on business/societal issues that relate to its theme. In his talk Mr. Hanuer dispelled the idea that the Rich create wealth and instead said it was really the middle-classes that drove the economy. He disparaged the idea that it is the entrepreneurs who are the “job creators”. Although the talk was well received by the conference attendees, TEDcuriously chose not to publicize it as it usually does with other such talks. Perhaps their decision was because Mr. Hanuer’s thesis goes against the current widely accepted mythology regarding job creation and entrepreneurship. Here is a video of his talk:
“an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience.”
My reading Dave’s article was the type of moment where you can imagine me slapping my head and exclaiming: “Damn, why didn’t I think of that”. Indeed, I’ve read all of Campbell’s books and seen all of his famed PBS series of interviews, done with Bill Moyers. What follows is my jumping off from Mr. Parker’s excellent comments and any credit for what I’m writing here goes to him for his perception. In applying Campbell to Mr. Hanuer’s comments, Dave solidified a concept for me that’s been playing in my head for years about the 1%’s need to increase the disparity between themselves and everyone else . The Rich are trying to create a new kind of feudalism where Lordships are won not on battlefields, but in corporate boardrooms. The rest of us need to be impoverished because without serfs to worship them, having everything ultimately becomes boring. Some of the 1% no doubt are less ego-driven and have empathy for those not on their level, but even they are beneficiaries of a mythology in creation. I believe that this mythology is the result of a campaign waged since the supporters of Barry Goldwater went down to an inglorious defeat. Continue reading “Mythology and the New Feudalism”→
First alcohol-free beer and now “highless” marijuana. Israeli researchers have developed a medicinal marijuana that can ease the symptoms of some ailments without producing the euphoric high of pot. For many this may seem like tasteless cake or non-alochoiic vodka, but the discovery could lead to some interesting legal and political issues.
Despite the recent pressures on the legal industry, lawyers still rank fifth in top paying jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) broke down average salaries and the top 15 may surprise you:
The conviction of former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 counts of child molestation and abuse seemed like the worst storm residents of Happy Valley could have endured. Now it seems that was just the opening gust of the hurricane. A series of emails recently turned over to investigators from a secret file in AD Tim Curley’s office suggests that university president, Graham Spanier, was more involved in the cover-up that previously thought and that former PSU head coach, Joe Paterno, was just as involved as many of us thought. Just 16 days after grad student, Mike McQueary, walked into the showers at the Penn State’s football temple athletic facility to find Sandusky behind a ten-year-old making “slapping noises,” an email issued from university vice president, Gary Shultz, to Spanier setting forth the agreement to report Sandusky’s actions. On February 26, 2001, Shultz wrote the three-part plan was to “talk with the subject [Sandusky]… contact the charitable organization [Second Mile]… and contacting the Department of Welfare.” In Pennsylvania, the Department of Welfare is required to investigate all allegations of child abuse. It works hand-in-glove with the law that requires educators and those working with children to report allegations of child abuse.
Like many of us, I’ve read the back-and-forth exchanges between our host, Professor Turley, and Wisconsin law professor, Ann Althouse, about Prf. Turley’s Washington Post (WaPo) article proposing an expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to nineteen members. It’s been a fascinating glimpse into what passes for dialog among American intelligentsia. Professor Turley reiterates a proposal he’s made years before, suggesting SCOTUS needs to keep up with the times and expand to reduce the power of a lone swing voter. Prf. Althouse responds that the reasons for the proposal cited by Prf. Turley are pure BS and that she knows better what’s in JT’s heart. Prf. Turley responds by saying her research into his position and attitude is deficient and laments the loss of civility among colleagues. Althouse replies that she’s just “plain talking” and that her real point was the manipulation of the timing of Turley’s article by the newspaper even as it drives its own pro-Obama agenda.
Someone sent me this screen shot from yesterday’s coverage and asked how I was able to join Chief Justice John Roberts in discussing the health care ruling. Frankly, I thought arriving at the studio in his robe was a bit much but I appreciate his participation in the coverage. It is, however, a bit unfair to reply to analysis by your co-panelist with “well, that is not what I meant.” I think I have a slightly better handle on his own intentions, fears, and feelings after doing this type of work for a couple decades. Indeed, I have been known to go into a deep trance on television and channel the thoughts of James Madison (as well as Thomas Paine’s bartender). Continue reading “Now Let’s Turn To Our Other Guest On What He Thinks Chief Justice Roberts Intended . . .”→
Anthony Chase, a former tenured professor at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center in Florida is suing the law school for firing him due to its fear that he was “mentally deranged enough to engage in a campus shooting rampage.” His attorney has charged that the school not only did not give him a fair investigation but “buried the entire paper trail” to justify the termination. The lawsuit raises a novel claim under Americans with Disabilities Act alleging that Chase was fired based on the school’s perception of a mental disability.
The University of Illinois College of Law has had a tough run in recent years. The school was hammered by an admissions scandal after it allegedly admitted unqualified or less competitive students to secure jobs or to please powerful politicians. Now it has been hit with a public censure and $250,000 fine by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar for intentionally reporting and publishing false admissions data in six out of the last 10 years.
