Interesting deleted comments on Prof. Seval Yildirim's Faculty Lounge thread.

The Faculty Lounge recently published a series of posts by tenured Whittier Law Professor Seval Yildirim, in which she described some of the adventures she had on a recent summer trip to Istanbul.

In Prof. Yildirim's first post, she recalled that she held an "interesting conversation on gender with my female taxi driver." She also recalled that she spoke to two friends who had been active in the protest movement, and stayed at a hotel near where, two month earlier, protestors clashed with the police. In her second post, she described attending a small demonstration and, later, attending a communal meal, where she listened to her tablemates' "stories of vulnerability" and then gave up her seat to a homeless child.

The Professor’s eventful trip naturally caused her to think weighty thoughts, such as about how "the human body as the most potent and crucial site of resistance against the State":

"I have been thinking about the human body as the most potent and crucial site of resistance against the State. I have written about the Muslim woman’s hair as a site of struggle between different political narratives. . . but the recent rise in protests around the world, especially since the Arab uprisings of 2011. . . have highlighted that the human body is increasingly the primary means of any sustained protest against power structures, including the State. This is especially true where the people perceive that they will not achieve justice through established formal legal and political means- from the Arab uprisings to the protests understandably objecting to the outcome of the Zimmerman trial . . . .I will expand more on this at the end of my trip, hoping that my discussions with the protestors will help crystallize my thoughts."

Some thread commenters found Yildirim’s posts to be thought-provoking and laudable, even courageous. Other commenters, however, found the stuff to be jejune and pretentious. The critical commenters noted that Yildirim’s has near-zero legal practice experience, and that her big salary and ample free time for travel and contemplation are ultimately provided to her by heavily indebted students at bottom-of-the-barrel Whittier Law, kids who think they are being trained to practice law.  

The Faculty Lounge left up the supportive comments, but deleted all of the critical ones. The Faculty Lounge has been tough on dissent lately, with routine deletions of comments smacking of a scamlaw critique and episodes of "outing" the alleged posters of these comments. Because I anticipated that the critical comments on Yildirim's most active thread would be zapped, I made pdfs. of the thread prior to the deletions. (links below). The best deleted critical comment, the one that summed up all the others, was this one:

"And to explain the point that critics make, once again, after it's been explained ad nauseam: the issue here is that Prof. Yildirim has no practice experience and is therefore utterly unqualified to teach youngsters how to practice law. Stress that said youngsters are at a low-ranked school and will NOT be taught how to practice by the Cravath rotation system. Their only teachers are the once they get at the law school. These students are told that they should tolerate the fact that their teacher has no ability to practice herself, and thus is unlikely to convey anything useful, -- because she allegedly contributes to "scholarship". So, desperately poor W[h]ittier students are asked to subsidize scholarship.

The key question becomes: *what* is that scholarship that's so valuable that it justifies the appointment of an otherwise unqualified teacher? *That's* why the hostility, Mr. Husband of Prof. Yildirim. Because the students, who are duped into years of unemployment and huge debt are looking are this jejune navel gazing and "though-crystallizing", as the author travels around the world, and thinking: is THIS what justifies my enormous tuition and the teaching by an incompetent person? THIS???? Not a serious scholarship that develops new doctrines, not upscale number-crunching on how regulation affects the markets or society, not empirical studies on what predicts judicial decisionmaking, etc etc-- but the musings about the human body as the means of protest??? Holy cow. Just holy damn cow."

I want to add that none of the critical comments on Faculty Lounge are mine, though I agree with them. I haven’t commented at the Faculty Louse, I mean Lounge, since early March, and I think that there are only marginal benefits to debating the scam with a bunch of scammers on a pro-scam site.

I also want to add, though it should be obvious, that I did not mean to imply in my own post last week that Prof. Yildirim is exceptional. Plenty of other law professors are dubiously qualified and pretentious. And even many of those who have produced some arguably useful scholarship or who have a background in practice have proven to be remarkably callous towards the disaster of debt and joblessness overwhelming their recent grads, the kids whose misplaced trust made them rich.

The handle chosen by the eloquent critical commenter quoted above was "anon prof." It is heartening that there may be law professors who are cognizant of the scam and distressed by it--I mean, other than the small number who have made themselves known. It is an utter platitude, but I am going to say it: teachers ought to care about their students. My mother was a public grade school teacher in a poor urban area way-back-when and participated in the inaugural Head Start program in 1965. I do not understand how so many law teachers can be so nonchalant, even smug, about the hardships and humiliations faced by their recent grads.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx6Von5RNu-haGE4LXFPMGlnTlU/edit   (part one of thread comments, prior to deletions, on Faculty Lounge post: "First Night in Istanbul: Thinking about the Human Body as the Site of Resistance").

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx6Von5RNu-hRnhQRXZoSkZoTHc/edit  (part two of thread comments, prior to deletions, on Faculty Lounge post: "First Night in Istanbul: Thinking about the Human Body as the Site of Resistance").