"Former UB Law School Professor Proceeds with Federal Law Suit Against Law School," by Lisa Epstein (The Spectrum)
After all the exciting news about the new global initiative and the cheerleader pep rally for more money, the University of Buffalo makes the news once again. A former law professor is proceeding with a federal lawsuit against the law school dean and others for wrongful discharge and breach of contract related to his termination. Reading between the lines a bit, it appears that said professor might have been somehow involved in an attempted coup of the law school dean. The university president quashed said attempted coup. Thereafter, said professor was terminated because his job no longer existed. The law school decided to "terminate" "Legal Research and Writing" and replace it with a whole new program called "Legal Analysis Writing and Research." The dean apparently won't provide the terminated professor with a letter of recommendation thereby effectively ending his professorhood. The article doesn't go on to explain why the professor didn't just take a six-figure salary with Big Law to mitigate his damages. Remember budding revolutionary professors, if you are planning to overthrow the king, you must kill the king.
"Defining Incompetence," by Carl Straumsheim (Inside Higher Ed)
The Board of Trustees at Brooklyn Law School have just adopted an expansive definition of causes for termination of tenured professors. Tenured professors are wondering what this means for them. Is it just a harmless change or is it laying the ground work for layoffs? Let me take a law school educated guess to assist any tenured professors who can't do their own analysis: Layoffs (lawoffs?) are coming.
"Is Law Faculty Tenure In or Out? ABA Can't Decide," by Karen Sloan (National Law Journal)
The American Bar Association Standard and Review Committee is currently tackling the issue of law school professor tenure. It cannot reach a consensus and is considering drafting a number of alternatives to increase, decrease, keep the same, or require no law schools to provide no tenure whatsoever. The standard that is adopted should be a weathervane pointing where law schools are headed.
See, when maligned students bring a lawsuit against a law school, it's a bunch of loser morans. When a maligned law professor brings suit against a law school, well, it's all good, then.
ReplyDeleteYes, yes, yes, I know the diffence between trying to prove fraud and trying to prove breach of an employment contract, thanks, so let's nip that in the bud. I'm just sayin'...what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.
I'm waiting for the day when a private loan lender sues a law school.
DeleteI am all against tenured profs but it seems that the switch in tenure will be used against those that do not support the status quo.
ReplyDeleteLaw schools are not willing to give even an inch. Any progress will have to be made with force from ABA/fed gov. That being said, I am more likely to pay off my student loans as a coding monkey before any tangible reform happens.
You're missing "Professor" in the title of the first hyperlink.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteYou can see that the "professor" pigs and cockroaches only care about maintaining the scam - and their bloated paychecks.
ReplyDeleteHow very insightful.
DeleteWhat, you running low on pictures of overflowed toilets and soiled diapers?
And of course, because tenure is at issue, our beloved hero Brian Leiter has swept in with his opinion:
ReplyDeletehttp://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/04/academic-freedom-and-due-process-under-threat-at-brooklyn-law-school.html
"But at least as alarming is the fact that the definition equates "demonstrated incompetence" not with a peer review finding of pedagogical and scholarly incompetence, but with wholly unreliable and disreputable criteria like students evaluations...."
Wholly unreliable and disreputable. Remember that.
And compare with:
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2012/11/paul-campos-says-happy-thanksgiving-to-female-law-students.html
"I have to admit that knowing Campos, and knowing that he cares not a whit about his students (see his teaching evaluations)..."
Or this:
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2011/08/update-on-scamprof.html
"My teaching evaluations, by the way, are a matter of public record, will ScamProf Campos share his?"
LOL. Even "great learned thinkers" have difficulty staying internally consistent - especially when the topic hits close to home. It's human nature.
DeleteOff topic, but there's a new posting at Faculty Lounge headed "Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom on the Legal Job Market" which some may find interesting, and has attracted comments from Brian Tamanaha.
ReplyDelete"The article doesn't go on to explain why the professor didn't just take a six-figure salary with Big Law to mitigate his damages."
ReplyDeleteLOL
Just to clarify, this is what the article said: The fired Buffalo professor was terminated at the end of the spring 2009 semester and the failed attempt to oust the Dean happened in October 2010. So he wasn't on the faculty when the attempted coup was quashed. The faculty was trying to get rid of a Dean who had been imposed on it by the Provost (now President) and who was getting the law school (and himself) into a lot of embarrassing legal trouble, with more to come. Why is the Dean protected by the President? Not in the article -- the law school has doubled its tuition since the Dean was appointed in 2008, even though the law school had a balanced budget at the time. Not good for the law students, but good for the President to have an extra seven million dollars a year to spread around.
ReplyDelete