Things to Read This Week (6/22)
Tales of collapse
More bangers this week:
“Now . . . This.” D.C. Circuit Judge Justin Walker on “what social media is doing to the increasingly uncivil and unhinged discourse about our courts and our law.”
The Collapse of AAUP Credibility, by Matthew Finkin (“This essay works through each of the AAUP actions at issue: point-by-point, sometimes paragraph by paragraph. It concludes that the AAUP has sacrificed adherence to principle for ends it values more and, in so doing, has squandered its credibility.”)
I have many mixed feelings about leaks in general, but the 2283 pages of Harvard Law Review submissions memos posted by the Washington Free Beacon are extremely educational about how one of the top student-edited law reviews works.
I finally joined the AAUP in 2020, having decided that even tho I opposed unionization, the AAUP's support for academic freedom had become so important I'd better help. Even though I'd been cancelled, twice, and was a known conservative, I was invited to join the statewide Committee A, the academic freedom committee, and the committee chose me as its chairman, and I retained the position under the next AAUP state president. I was very impressed. The local Indiana University AAUP hadn't lifted a finger for me when the Provost and my Dean publicly and viciously attacked me, but the State people were genuinely welcoming, and we joked about my conservatism ("Even Eric opposes that . . . ).
But I resigned in 2024. The national AAUP ending its opposition to boycott of Israeli scholars and endorsing DEI loyalty oaths was too much for me. It dismayed the old guy local and state people too, who were all leftwing but not all woke.