Monday, December 23, 2013

Comments and Corrections: Additional thoughts on Prof. Nancy Leong's Leiteresque Smear Artistry.


I had hoped to conclude my internet sparring with law Prof. Nancy Leong. However her recent, and most inventive, piece of smear-artistry requires some comments and corrections. 

The primary flaw in Leong’s five-post series at Feminist Law Professors, especially her concluding post, is her deliberate failure to consistently distinguish between harassment and criticism, which allows her to describe critics of her work as harassers, of whom I am deemed “the most persistent.”  

Google's online dictionary provides workable thumbnail definitions of the terms "harassment" and "criticism." Harassment is defined as "aggressive pressure or intimidation." Criticism is defined as "the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes" and as "the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work."

I assert that legitimate criticism includes expressing the view that a particular law review article is meritless or absurd. And few are as meritless and absurd as Nancy Leong's remarkable law review article entitled The Open Road and the Traffic Stop: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of the American Dream," 64 Fla L.Rev. 305 (2012) (complaining that Fourth Amendment caselaw is "dry," "mundane," and "focused on minutiae" in contrast to the "poetry or magic" of her fave movies and songs, those that feature the open road as a narrative motif). Likewise, it is criticism, rather than harassment, to note the irony that the author of this nonsense is a stalwart proponent of the view that legal scholarship holds immense value for law students and the profession, and to note the further irony that the author has zero practice experience in the field she is paid so well to profess: criminal law. 

The category of harassment, by contrast, includes Professor Leong's behavior in snooping the identity of a pseudonymous critic and then sending that critic a stalker email containing false accusations of racism and sexism, and a demand for a discussion via a medium (telephone) specified by her and by a deadline imposed by her, under the threat of outing. Nancy Leong is my harasser, not the other way around. In the classic fashion of smear artists, such as Brian Leiter, she projects her behavior on to others. I appreciate that Leong does not know much about criminal law, which she has never practiced. Therefore, she may find it instructive to look up the statutory definition of intimidation in my jurisdiction. 

In her efforts to portray me as obsessed, Leong asserts that I have posted approximately 70 comments about her under the pseudonym "dybbuk" and that it "would not surprise" her to learn that some offensive anonymous comments about her were also authored by me. Contrary to this claim, if you tally up my posts and comments referencing Leong, the number is around 25. Furthermore, I have not commented on Leong under any other screen name, or as an anonymous poster--and will say so in an affidavit, if it comes to that.

I believe that all of my posts and comments regarding Leong, with the exception of a single wisecrack, pertain either to her article Open Road, or to her utter lack of practice experience in the field of criminal law. I am especially proud of this short satiric piece about Open Road, which Leong describes as a "lengthy play[ ] about me." It is telling that, throughout Leong's truly lengthy series of blog posts about her alleged harassment at the cyber-hands of me and other scambloggers, she does not once acknowledge the existence of Open Road, let alone that is is the target of much of the scamblogger criticism, especially my own. Perhaps, she is ashamed of the article. If so, that is to her credit -- she should be ashamed of it.  

The only example Leong offers to substantiate her contention that I made numerous racist posts is particularly ludicrous. In a comment on a JD Underground (JDU) thread last year, I referred to a law professor conference in Hawaii, where Leong was one of the speakers, as "a gravy train, or shall I say, a luau train." "Gravy train" was a reference to the free vacations masquerading as scholarly conferences that law professors routinely hold for themselves, vacations ultimately paid for by their massively indebted students. "Luau train" was my reference to the fact that this particular law professor conference was held at a Waikiki beach resort, where they stage starlight luaus for the pampered resort guests. 

Leong described my joke about a "luau train" as an effort to disparage her Native Hawaiian ancestry, something I had no idea she possessed. Personally, I doubt that Leong herself believes that that comment was racist. It is yet another irony that a lawprof, who blogs in an authoritative tone about the proper way to converse about race, grants herself permission to defend her wounded pride with false accusations of racism.



I addressed Leong's creative interpretation of "luau train" in my response to the first post in Leong's series. In her subsequent four posts, Leong did not repeat the claim that my joke about "luau train" was a racist slur, even though it was the entire basis of her accusation of racism. Having thus implicitly abandoned her contention that my joke about "luau train," was racist, she tries to paper over the resulting evidentiary vacuum with another smear--namely, that all but one of my profiles of lawprofs involved a female lawprof or a lawprof of color. False, too, and as an assiduous reader of my posts and comments, she knows it. 

I do not know what constitutes a full profile, but I certainly have commented and posted extensively about many scamming lawprofs of the white male variety. Just ask white male lawprofs such as Brian Leiter, Kaimipono Wenger, Adam Lamparello, Mark Sundahl, Ian Farrell, Larry Sager, Gabe Feldman, Paul Horwitz, andre douglas pond cummings, Douglas O. Linder, Roderick ("Rick") Hills Jr., David Yellen, Alfred C. Aman, John O'Brien, and several others. In fact, Nancy has given me the idea of doing a retrospective post, which I will call "Stupid White Male Lawprofs" or "A Trip Down Scammery Lane."

So Nancy is reduced to posting and reposting a screenshot of that single wisecrack. Oh, wait, she also throws in a screenshot of an over-the-top joke I made over two years ago on JD Underground (a forum where over-the-top humor is routine) about spanking a right-wing anti-Occupy Wall Street protestor who held up a sign bragging that she regarded no job as too degrading to service her vast law school debts. Leong suggests that these two comments are the tip of the iceberg of my alleged racism, sexism, bigotry, identity-based online harassment, obsession, and derangement, but that she "is making no effort to publicize [it] all." What she means is that she has no evidence to offer, but she hopes that you believe her when she says that it exists.  

Leong wonders why I refused to hold a conversation with her as she demanded in her stalker email. First, because she attempted to procure the conversation through intimidation and smears. Second, because she specified that the conversation be conducted by telephone -- meaning there would be no written record of its contents, which would allow a dishonest person like herself to characterize the substance and tone of the conversation in any way she liked. Third, though she prudently refuses to acknowledge this in her series, I already did have a direct exchange with Leong in a thread on JD Underground. (below) During that exchange, which occurred two days before she phoned me and four days before she sent her stalker email, she did not accuse me of "identity-based harassment" or bigotry, but correctly acknowledged that the focus of my critique was her law review article. 




A concluding personal note on a post that is already far too long. I am a lefty myself, just like so many lawprofs.  But unlike them, I am not a hypocrite about it. What Leong and many oh-so-progressive lawprofs fail to understand is that we scambloggers, whatever one may think of our individual focuses and tones, are human rights activists. We are fighting a terrible institutional scam perpetuated by rich and privileged academics. This scam has ruined the lives of tens of thousands of bright but naive kids who are guilty of the sole, though grievous, offense of having trusted lawprofs and lawdeans.

I have practiced law for a long time, and I like it. It is no pleasure to observe the deterioration of opportunities for new law grads, and most other lawyers, which is largely due to the behavior of law schools in pumping out way too many law grads than the market can sustain, year after year. Furthermore, as the son of an ex-teacher, it is no pleasure to observe the arrogance, deceit, and willful self-serving ignorance displayed by the alleged teachers of my profession, as they enrich themselves off the likely future suffering of their own students. However, I take solace in the fact that the law school scam is crashing, and in a minuscule way, perhaps I am making a contribution to that. Hey, lawprofs, how is this for economic and social justice: As your recent grads are now, so shall you be.  




101 comments:

  1. This is an excellent coda to Leong's silly pity party, which she dragged across five extremely boring blog posts. Leong really went to great lengths to try to intimidate Dybbuk and to characterize him as a racist, sexist, bigoted bully. We all see through this tactic -- it is her only method for trying to change the subject from substantive discussions of her qualifications and her writing. By taking a few screenshots of anonymous internet trolls and juxtaposing them with Dybbuk's posts, she hoped to smear her critic. Too bad no one reads her blog.

    Her stalkerish phone call and email and her threats of making bar complaints are truly deplorable, but I have to believe that she is smart enough not to open that Pandora's box. If she complained about scambloggers to bar associations, it would draw a lot of attention to her obsessiveness and her dishonesty. If her mission with all of this was to try to intimidate people on the internet into shutting up about her mediocrity, her plan has failed.

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  2. I took the time to read NL’s “Consequences and Conclusions” post and found it to be bizarre and somewhat disturbing. From the post:

    “Lots of infamous people have had lots of substantive things to say–Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is one example. That doesn’t mean these people should be excused for the hateful ideas intertwined with their substantive ones.”

    Ted Kaczynski, as we all know, killed and maimed a bunch of innocent people in a meticulous and premeditated fashion by blowing them up with bombs. How strange that it is Kaczynski's "hateful ideas" that stand out in NL's mind.

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    1. It's no surprise that Leong thinks Kaczynski's hateful ideas were substantive. Many academic feminists harbor violent fantasies of revenge against men. This, of course, is their evidence that men are violent. It's a twisted, paranoid system of thought.

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    2. Sorry, Leong distinguished between "hateful" and "substantive" ideas, I made a mistake there. But it's obvious that she's eager to control the expression of any ideas she finds "hateful," even if they're nothing like the ideas that motivated Kaczynski. And many professors, even supposed progressives, do cultivate their own violent and militaristic fantasies while projecting them onto others.

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    3. from Nancy Leong at NancyLeong.com on December 19, 2013:

      "...I can throw a punch that will break your nose."

      Ouch.

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  3. It's amazing the power of the word "racism". The accusation is thrown about so easily these days.

    Racism is bad because its a type of hatred, but those shouting it are so often filled with deeper hatred and a corresponding blindness to it. As if the color of their skin or political ideology make them morally incapable of hate.

    Its ironic how hatred itself is so often the motivation behind self-righteous accusations of racism.

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    1. A racist is now mostly defined as anyone who is winning an argument with a member of a racial minority.

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  4. I gave up on her series of posts after the second one. The others were just indulgent and not worth reading.

    I'm going out on a limb here, typing some thoughts on my phone without the benefit of time and space to review, but here goes. While all racism, sexism, and other firms of discrimination are absolutely worth fighting against, being a part of that fight doesn't make the participant a victim.

    For example, Nancy Leong is perhaps a crusader in the fight against racism and sexism, but she seems to feel that this makes her a victim of said racism and sexism.

    And I would suggest, obviously presumptively but not without the benefit of seeing it time and time again, that on the scale of "victimhood", she is perhaps a 2 out of 10.

    Case in point: her overblown offense at a non-racist remark that she had to exaggerate beyond all recognition in order to place herself squarely in the victim category.

    Not all women are victims of sexism. Not all non-whites are victims of racism. Of course, many are, but as Nancy shows, there are many hangers-on who use the mere fact that they are female or non-white to allege discrimination they themselves are not the victims of.

    Nancy has to show far more than breasts to claim she's a victim of sexism, and she's got to show far more than non-Caucasian appearance to claim she's a victim of racism.

    (That first sentence - about breasts - sounds dirty but was not intended to be.)

    And yes, there are countless cases of victims of seeping, inadvertent racism and sexism out there, women and minorities who have been kept down through society's white male dominance rather than any specific acts against them personally, but Nancy isn't one of them.

    She's a well-raised, NY Times wedded, privileged law professor.

    She'll claim until she dies that she's successful because she just worked that much harder than everyone else to overcome. She, I think, is oblivious to the benefits of her female and minority privilege when it comes to rounding out a faculty.

    And filing a bar complaint against dybbuk just shows what this is all about. She was insulted and wants a little revenge.

    The petty reaction of a spoiled little girl.

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    1. Well said. If Nancy had any substantive rebuttal to dybbuk's spot-on and scathing critique, we would have heard it by now. That's why Nancy is deploying these rhetorical distractions. It's way easier than admitting dybbuk is right about her.

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    2. And yet again we see an excellent post discredited by moronic, hillbilly accusations of affirmative action.

      Every time I want to rise up and applaud a scamblogging author, I'm disheartened by the stupidity of at least some of his or her supporters.

      Nancy Leong benefited from affirmative action, you say. Apart from your ironically racist observation that she is Asian-American (racist because Asian-Americans are actually harmed more than helped by affirmative action, as a matter of simple math), state your evidence to prove this allegation please. And by evidence I'm not talking about your insipid platitudes and Sarah Palin-inspired quotations. I'm talking about Leong’s personal transcripts, scholarships she's been awarded, and actual documentation from her actual admission to Stanford. I'm waiting.

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    3. She gets Native Hawaiian status, where even 1/32 ancestry makes you a victim entitled to an academic job. Just as Native American status benefits marginally qualified Harvard Law professors with blonde hair...

      Her family name is obviously Chinese, but she's using the Native Hawaiian card to get to the top. That's probably what got her into Stanford.

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    4. Not all whites are victims of racism, but of course, many are.

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    5. How do you know she reported herself as part-Hawaiian in her application documents? Have you seen them? More importantly, why the fuck would the University of Denver be fixated enough with a 1/32nd Hawaiian when there are plenty of Ivy Leaguers who are 100 percent Cherokee et al.? You people are beginning to sound like birthers.

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    6. The evidence that she mentioned Hawaiian ancestry on her application is the fact that she mentions it constantly in her blog posts.

      Try to use some common sense here.

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    7. Common sense would be backing down by admitting that you can't prove the allegation. You have no access to the relevant evidence and therefore have to resort to conjecture, assumptions, and Palin quotes.

      Kind of like a birther.

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    8. You must be a law professor, 4:26, or you wouldn't be throwing around pseudo-legal terminology on Christmas Day.

      If saying that Nancy Leong consistently identifies herself as Hawaiian is an "allegation," then there must be something wrong with her doing so. I would tend to disagree, but maybe you can explain what's wrong with it. Is your beef with affirmative action, or with affirmative action for minority students from middle-class backgrounds? Or perhaps you don't like ethnic and racial identification in general?

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    9. Here's a great Sarah Palin quote for the guy who's better at name-calling than he is at arguing: "She, I think, is oblivious to the benefits of her female and minority privilege when it comes to rounding out a faculty."

      Palin wouldn't have said it any better herself.

      The fact that Leong "says she's Native Hawaiian" during an online argument is not proof that an affirmative action program gained her admission into Stanford Law School, or onto the faculty of the University of Denver. If anything, based on the numerous Asian-American law graduates I know, her LSAT score and GPA probably blew yours out of the water. God help you people if you are actually litigators or hope to be some day.

      And just to be clear, Leong is an embarrassment to law professors everywhere, and a perfect emblem of what is wrong with law schools today. I agree with 100 percent of dybbuk's criticism of her. Your baseless and foolish attempts at supporting that criticism are distractions that serve to undermine dybbuk's message. The movement needs your thought process on its side like we need a hole in the head.

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    10. But that's not a Sarah Palin quote. It's a quote from an online poster. Yours is such a transparent lie that no one's going to believe you any more. You have zero credibility.

      And that quote that Leong "says she's Native Hawaiian" doesn't exist. It's fabricated by you. She mentioned her ancestry constantly in her four blog posts, supposedly to support claims of racial harassment. If you haven't read her posts, you have no business talking down to someone who has. And she's not claiming to be Asian-American, but Native Hawaiian. Don't you know the difference? That's basic fifth-grade knowledge.

      Cheating with definitions and quotations won't get me to "back down," which is your neurotic way of keeping score as an Internet bully. I don't know what you're doing here, but you certainly aren't advancing any movement by lying, faking evidence, and making a general fool of yourself. I don't think you agree with dybbuk or anyone else here. You're probably just looking for someone to attack because you hate yourself on Christmas, and in any case you enjoy causing trouble on this site.

      As far as name-calling, that's a projection by an emotional infant who thinks the word "birther" is a devastating put-down. I really don't care. It won't work on me. In any case, it's the most stupid and irrelevant name you could have chosen, and no one, absolutely no one, is impressed.

      I care about the issues raised on this site, and I'm not going to let a cranky old hypocrite distract me. But I do need to thank you here at the end. You're most likely a miserable lawyer who hates his life, and your comments are all the evidence anyone could ever need that law is not a glamorous or noble profession. This does advance the goals of the movement, however dimly you realized it when you started your intellectual food fight.

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    11. In addition to name-calling you're a psychologist too.

      The fact remains, very simply and clearly, that you accuse Leong of benefiting from affirmative action without any evidence whatsoever. This is a favored, and failed, tactic of people who generally don't hold rational views of how the world works. They tend to think that white people are oppressed, there's a war on Christmas, and so on. And if people like this are behind the scamblogger movement, maybe their message is as laughable as their other arguments.

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    12. So, my disturbed friend, what is 'birther?" Is that a name you called me twice before I responded, or is it an admission letter from Yale? Or is it a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science? A priceless Renoir that someone found in her attic? Perhaps a free vacation for two in Santa Barbara?

      I think it was a name you called me.

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    13. Hey there 8:20, I salute you and ask: If affirmative action is fine and good, then how can anyone "accuse" Nancy Leong of benefitting from it? Wouldn't it be the highest form of praise to indicate her close relationship to the noble institution of affirmative action?

      You wouldn't be somewhat ashamed of your belief in affirmative action, would you?

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    14. Stanford Law School statistics for this year's classes show 574 students in all three classes, and not a single Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. That's obviously relevant to the Nancy Leong incidents, but could be taken in several ways.

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  5. While in public law professors may be agreeing heartily with her that she should fight back, in private they are thinking my god I'm glad that idiot is making herself look stupid.

    Which morons in the faculty lounge advised you that any of this was a good idea, Nancy? Leiter? (He's known for using people like pawns). Someone at Denver or UCLA?

    Odd how it's just you fighting this battle. Probably because all the other professors aren't stupid enough to believe the twisted lies you're relying on.

    When it comes to telling the truth, you're now tainted Nancy. Anyone with half a brain can read between the lines and see that you are deliberately twisting words for your own spiteful purposes. And not linking to this blog in your own blog posts doesn't shield your readers from the original source material here. They can still read all about your lying through the magic of Google.

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  6. Have you ever known someone you just didn't like talking to, someone who you just got bad vibes from? I have known four people like that in my life. I can have a pleasant conversation with almost anyone from any walk of life, but it was very difficult to talk with these four people.

    There was a certain cast to their mouth, a sort of perpetual sneer and a cold calculating look to their eyes. There was a kind of inchoate nastiness to them, and I always left the conversation feeling unsatisfied and vaguely apprehensive. I think these people are sociopaths. One of them is a friend of a friend and has occasionally suggested that we go fishing together. There is no way I would get on a boat with him. I am actually scared that he would attempt to do me in. He once struck a mentally disabled man in the head with a knife sharpener and almost broke his skull.

    I get that feeling from looking at Leiter's picture and seeing him talk on Bloomberg law news.
    He has the face of someone I would wish to avoid at all costs. Does he have a family, or is he a confirmed bachelor? How is he rated as a professor? I'm curious to know if he displays the other Hare psychopath traits. I'm sure he's not the violent type, but I wonder if he has left a trail of psychologically wounded people behind him.

    Does anyone know? I'm genuinely curious.

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    1. Leiter is a follower of the moral philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. He taught that the strong should abuse and kill the weak, and men ought to strive to be strong in this way. Hitler said that Nietzsche was his favorite philosopher.

      Nietzsche scholars know all this but they generally deny and obfuscate when these facts are mentioned. Hitler didn't fully understand Nietzsche, and his philosophy emphasizes self-empowerment, they say. If you want to see for yourself, go to the bookstore and read the first few pages of Nietzsche's book 'the antichrist' to read his own words about the need to abuse and murder 'the weak'. Then you will understand why Superman Leiter is so abusive and nasty to others.

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    2. And what a disciple he has in Nancy Leong!

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    3. This Leiter chap sounds a bit deranged. I would expect different behavior from someone with his credentials and position. How does someone who appears to be in his 50's have all this time to spend on the internet? Why does so much inchoate rage come from someone who should be settling into dotage?
      I understand defenders of the scam may get unwarranted personal, racist, sexist, etc attacks from anonymous posters, but that doesn't provide cover for them to launch their own ad hominem attacks and ignore or obfuscate the scam. Truth will out.

      The only decent course is to start with the facts and focus on your arguments rather than personally attacking your opponents. That type of disrespectful behavior is simply not put up with outside academia. Since academics like Leiter and Leong have never really spent much time outside the ivory tower, they have never faced the consequences of behaving that way.

      And the horrible truth can be summed up with a few unassailable facts: 45,000 law school graduates a year for less than 28,000 job openings, toxic levels of nondischargeable debt, bait and switch scholarships, low lifetime median attorney salaries, law schools putting outright lies in their employment data, rubbish law review articles, professors who have very little to no experience practicing law, etc.

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    4. I was talking this week with a friend of mine, who has BA and MA degrees and a strong interest in philosophy, especially German philosophy. He told me he had actually thrown away one of his Nietzsche books because it was "an evil book."

      I happen to think there are no evil books, only evil people. But when evil people choose books to read, far too many of them choose to read Nietzsche's masterpiece, "Beyond Good and Evil." It seems to comfort them somehow.

      I find it interesting that Brian Leiter revels in Nietzsche, going so far as to base an entire jurisprudence on the ravings of a syphilitic madman. I'd say that the University of Chicago, which was careless enough to hire Leiter, is now a laughingstock in the legal community, and looking worse and worse all the time. The academic placement of Chicago law graduates has fallen to subprime levels. If we consider only students advised by Leiter, that placement is nearly nonexistent.

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    5. Agreed, 7:57. I suspect the actual Philosophy Department at U of C is mildly embarrased by Leiter. As if Nietzche has not been critiqued by later philosophers or as if nothing has happened in the field Nietzche's passing.

      Is Nietzche important to study? Certainly. Was Nietzche the "last, great philsopher" and should he be fetishized, as Leiter has done? By no means. But don't tell Leiter that...he fancies himself a "philosopher," you see, and has staked his entier career on blind devotion to something that is 150 years old.

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  7. Nancy is simply a young girl who does not have the maturity to handle the criticism hurled her way. She has probably been told how wonderful she is all her life and she simply is not used to being crticised by the masses. I am sure some day she will grow up and take in stride that she is not ms. Wonderful. Just a cog in the wheel of the higher education scam.

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    1. Talk about your sexist comments! At what age is a woman no longer a "young girl"? 17? 18? 21? 25? 31? 35?

      IMO, Ms Leong is a grown-behind WOMAN who is demonstrating emotional immaturity, a trait which, sadly, can be observed in specimens of any age.

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  8. Dybbuk, I feel sorry for you that Leong is making a bar complaint to get her little revenge. I read her "Conesquences" post, and she made it appear as if her decision to do so is righteous and in further of the public interest, even though it clearly is to satisfy her desire for revenge - not to mention to shut you up about her.

    Unfortunately, targeting people with criticism is going to backfire on occasion, and this sort of stuff will happen. We all "want" to think the First Amendment will prevail, but once you look at the rules of professional conduct, our rights are abridged beyond that of the "ordinary" citizen.

    As lawyers, who are graced with higher public status and hence, influence, you'd "think" that we would have equal, if not greater, latitude, in terms of speech since the purpose of the First Amendment is for the advancement of social agendas based on publicly-proclaimed opinion - as unabridged as it should be.

    Unfortunately, you might find that the panel who reviews the complaint will not care much to entertain a rigorous Constitutional analysis. Instead, they will just see "asshole" painted all over you. It's the price you might wind up paying in your effort to lead a social movement.

    And if you look at why Leong published all the other people's comments, it is because she wants to ascribe them to you and ultimately to "the scamblog" movement. If (when) word gets out you were reprimanded by the bar, it will squelch members' public ridicule of individuals involved in the scam.

    I think some commenters go further than I would in the way they criticize certain individual personally, but you are right. There is a difference between criticism and harassment. She did not like the criticism, and consequently undertook what I'd label as a course of malicious prosecution against you.

    I am no fan of bar committees squelching the First Amendment. I hope that in the event the committee opts to take a narrow-minded approach, you would appeal it in the courts. The problem, I know, is that you will have pressure to "suck it up" and to "close the chapter" quietly - perhaps mainly from your employer.

    Good luck! And here's a bit of advice (which you've probably already done): Start reading the cases where bar rules (as applied) were struck down as being in violation of the First Amendment. There are some of these, I know, dealing with the issue of lawyer advertising.

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    1. I want to point out that Ms. Leong may not have filed a bar complaint against dybbuk or against anyone at all. Her post was vague. She did not say that she filed the complaint against dybbuk, she just said that she filed it against one of her main critics -- and she made this claim after talking about dybbuk specifically for a few paragraphs.

      So she strongly implied that she filed a complaint against dybbuk, but her vague language was slippery. The complaint may not have been against dybbuk, and indeed she may have made the whole thing up completely.

      If she did follow through with this intimidation tactic, I think dybbuk has nothing to fear. The complaint is the epitome of frivolous (she is not a client or even in the same state), and the personal motivations of Nancy Leong are obvious. The only outcome to such a stupid course of action is substantially more negative internet content about Nancy, which is the thing she was trying to curb all this time, right? It seems counterproductive for her unless she is hypnotized by her own zeal.

      The bar committee would trash this complaint the day they received it.

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    2. If you practice long enough, sooner or later you will have a bar complaint. If you steal from a client, don't respond to a client and ignore them, you have problems. Posting your opinions on a message board? I think the bar officials will get a good laugh out of this one. This woman is a spoiled child who needs to grow up.

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    3. You are correct. She merely implies it.

      I started looking at the rules, and they do seem to universally require some role, such as advocate for a client, which dybbuk never possessed.

      In any event, the poor lady is rattled, you can tell. It'd probably be better to leave her alone. She seems overly sensitive to the point that it leaves the impression she is becoming emotionally disturbed. But hey, so are most of the scambloggers..... LOL!

      As I had warned in a thread in JDU some months back, anonymity affords people to say some things they would not say if their identities were known. That's not to suggest these things are not lawful to say, but it is to state the obvious: that in the eyes of many people, what is being said is stupid, idiotic, impolite, juvenile - or whatever adjective you want to use to the effect of, "You ought to be ashamed to be talking like that."

      As is obvious now, and which I warned about, if they want to find out who you are, they can and they will. And to the extent they can, they can cause you some real grief. This is where the rubber hits the road, and it's not just a bunch of blogging anymore.


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    4. @ 8:49. It's not as easy as that. Imagine you went to law school. Imagine you did well. Imagine you were good-looking and had connections. Imagine an offer was made for you to become a professor. You accept. Life is good.

      Now, somewhere along the way, you see a bunch of biting vitriole about you published by someone, and a bunch of others pile on like a rabid mob.

      You have to be thinking to yourself, "WTF?????" I know I would, and you can bet I'd be really, really pissed.

      Let's put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose dybbuk was outed (she claims she could do that since she figured out who he was). Let's say his name is "John Givens." Now, suppose she started a blog movement against disgruntled lawyers who are worthless losers. "John Givens doesn't have enough moxy to be a power lawyer." "Givens is a lowly commoner who is made because he couldn't make the grade." "Rather than making the grade like a real man, Givens spends his time writing childish blogs in an attempt to denigrate a career he failed at." "Looking at Givens' cases on record, he couldn't defend Mother Teresa." "Givens blew it in this case, and that case, and that case." "You have to feel sorry for his clients." "Givens is lucky he hasn't had several malpractice cases filed against him." "He is a poor excuse of a cheap, public defense attorney."

      You get the idea. It's a lot different when real names are involved, with real works, and in Leong's case, it happened that way.

      Delete
    5. I couldn't have said it better, 8:49. Disciplinary commissions have their hands full dealing with real misconduct--attorneys who commingle trust account funds with operating or personal accounts, criminal behavior, incompetence -- and likely have no time for soothing the hurt feelings of a thin skinned academic with a lot of free time on her hands. In my state, and I suspect mine is little different in this regard, approximately half of the referrals do not even proceed to the investigation stage. The state bar simply dismisses the complaint for lack of merit and sends the complained against attorney a letter stating as much. If the good professor actually follows through on her threat, I would expect the same result.

      Delete
    6. Anonymity is, in the safe words of Lana Wachowski, like virginity. You lose it only once.

      If you want to give it up voluntarily, like Leong did (and the career benefits she receives in return, via her publishing record, are her compensation for this), then cool.

      But trying to take someone's anonymity away forcefully is intellectual rape. You are having your right to participate in anonymous discussions and air your opinions and thoughts taken away from you. For good.

      Trying to "out" someone because you don't like what they have to say is disgusting. Ignore it. Unless it's a public safety issue, the only acceptable response is either ignore or reply.

      Delete
    7. "Trying to "out" someone because you don't like what they have to say is disgusting."

      That's some funny stuff, right there. Move over, Nancy, and make way for a new kind of harassment.... "outing."

      Delete
    8. She is trying to silence valid criticism not by countering her accusers, but by threatening them.

      Bar complaints...what a dope!

      Delete
    9. "We all "want" to think the First Amendment will prevail, but once you look at the rules of professional conduct, our rights are abridged beyond that of the "ordinary" citizen.""

      Our rights are abridged in the context of carrying out professional functions because it is reasonable regulation that is narrowly tailored to maintain the integrity of the bar. Non-lawyer speech about a law professor should be completely protected.

      Delete
    10. In her fourth post, Leong stated that her ethics complaint was based on the rules of a particular jurisdiction, implying that it wouldn't have been viable in other jurisdictions. I doubt that dybbuk is the target of any formal complaint, and agree with others that Leong's narrative of filing a complant may be fictitious. So much of that post was falsified or exaggerated that I suspect she's losing concern for the truth and running on pure emotion. And while I deplore her intent to punish her online critics, her actual emotions at this point sound more like resignation than anger. She may have actually learned something about criminal law in the last month, and realized the limits of her imaginary power.

      Delete
    11. Nancy Leong wrote at nancyleong.com on December 19 that "I can throw a punch that will break your nose." So she has a backup plan just in case the state bar doesn't discipline dybbuk...

      Delete
  9. Nancy Leong's article is postmodernist nonsense. Any intelligent person who reads her article can see this. However, they will not say this because they are afraid of being labelled racists or sexists. This is how the left works today. It takes a brave child to say "The Emporer has no clothes."

    ReplyDelete
  10. Bar complaints 101.

    The jurisdiction of the bar is for matters concerning the practice of law. For example, see how CA approches attorney discipline:

    "The bar has limited authority to discipline lawyers for such behavior as rudeness..."

    The bar is not a parent. It's not going to slap anyone on the wrist for ANYTHING that arises out of activities unconnected with the practice of law or fitness to do so. And if it could discipline people for expressing opinions or being mean, almost every attorney would be in jeopardy. (Remember that state bars are, for all intents and purposes, government agencies and thus subject to the first amendment). At most, it'll look at this matter, realize it's from yet another of the 99.9% of idiots who think the bar is there to solve every problem in the entire world that involves an attorney ("he was mean to me...", "I'll show him...", "he parked in my spot again..."), and send Nancy a " not our job" letter.

    She is showing her lack of legal knowledge...again. This is one of your professors, folks!

    ReplyDelete
  11. As a movement, we can all welcome the ill-advised, malicious actions of Leong as she is helping to lift the curtain on the whole borderline-criminal charade she and her ilk continue to perpetrate.

    However as an individual, I empathize with dybbuk's being singled out for harasment by Leong. I can't help but remember how dybbuk reacted with humor once (long ago in another comment section) when a misguided commentor came to dybbuk's defense when he felt he had had been slighted by another commenter who referred to him as a "jewish ghost." Funny.

    The beauty of Leong singling out Dybbuk for personal intimidation and harassment is that his tolerance and his moderate and compassionate input to this movement are well documented in various comment sections and original posts for a good two years prior to Leong entering this dialog.

    Happy Holidays to everyone.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Wait a minute. Am I to understand that this woman filed a bar complaint for what you said on JD Underground? Really? I read what she says you said, on JDU, and I have to admit that as a woman, I'm not too fond of the sexual characterization (if you indeed wrote that). But, Jesus Wept, Ms. Leong! If you can't stand the heat, get out of the f------ kitchen! (Whoops, she's going to complain to my Board about me!). I'm a woman. I've practiced law for 27, long years. Trust me. I've heard worse. Much worse. From judges, even. And professors (my God, you have no idea what it use to be like). And you know what? I dealt with it . . . by ignoring it and got on with winning my case, or deposing my witness, or negotiating my settlement; because, you know . . . I'm a grown-up. Ms. Leong, if you want to whine about something, try coming out here in the real world and try to make a living while battling tort-reform, massive lawyer-overproduction, and ever-rising overhead. If I may speak as one of the old-guard women lawyers, I didn't battle sexism in its most blatant and insidious forms so someone like you, who directly benefitted from those battles could use charges of "sexism" like a cudgel to shut up critics who find your law review articles the worse sort of pablum.

    By the way, Ms. Leong, if you took time from your oh so busy schedule, your oh so critical work of advancing the profession, to read my little, insignificant comment and if I have hurt your feelings and you wish to lodge a complaint against me (apparently, your retaliatory method of choice), you may send it to the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility.

    Tricia Dennis
    Chattanooga, TN

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You hurt my feelings. Complaint filed for your sexist and racist comments.

      Delete
    2. Ms. Dennis, this is the quote of the year on this site:

      "If I may speak as one of the old-guard women lawyers, I didn't battle sexism in its most blatant and insidious forms so someone like you, who directly benefitted from those battles could use charges of "sexism" like a cudgel to shut up critics who find your law review articles the worse sort of pablum."

      Truly Solomonesque in your wisdom.

      Delete
    3. You are kind. Would you be my character witness when I must answer Miss Nancy's complaint?

      Delete
    4. Tricia's comment is beautifully stated. I'm a racial minority and am thoroughly disgusted by the fact that Leong would waste bar resources with a frivolous complaint like this, all while trying to duck under the cover of “racism.” By filing it, she proves the indictment of her that brought this about in the first place: she is not a practitioner and has no experience as an actual lawyer.

      Congratulations, Professor Leong. You've committed basically the only lawyer-like act in your career that anyone is aware of, by initiating a regulatory process against another person. Unfortunately, you're about to learn your first lesson in real life as a lawyer: don't initiate a legal process unless you have investigated the facts, investigated the law, and spent considerable time deliberating the wisdom of proceeding. When you fail to conduct these steps, you lose.

      Delete
  13. It's hard to believe anyone at DU or UCLA would even hire someone like this, let alone maintain her employment following this behavior. Does admin really think this person is competent? It seems fair to say when it comes to law school hiring the blind is leading the blind.

    I know, and water is wet.

    ReplyDelete
  14. We are starting to see the effects of the "I'm so special! Trophies for meee!" generation making their way into positions of responsibility.

    One feels that Nancy Leong's worldview is like that if a 1990s teen movie: she's the popular girl for whom everything works out like a dream, everyone loves her and she rules the school. And she engages in spiteful and petty attacks.

    THIS DEBATE ISN'T ABOUT YOU NANCY. STOP MAKING IT ABOUT YOU. IT'S ABOUT YOUR USELESS PROFESSION.

    But with your youthful age, can we expect things to not be all about you?

    ReplyDelete
  15. This brouhaha is now reaching a wider audience:

    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/12/law-professor-tries-to-leverage-phony-claims-of-racial-victimization-into-better-job#comments

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LGM is on fire with this story. Nice work dybbuk. The righteous one has triumphed in the end. The general opinion over there is that Nancy has shot her career in the foot because she tried too hard to find a story where none existed, and she ended up making up a bunch of lies and trying to exploit them instead of engaging in any kind of real scholarship.

      Delete
    2. You know, Nancy's problem is that she listens to a few feminist firebrands at the, uh, feminist law professors site, and then thinks the whole world admires her, agrees with her, and owes her perpetual deference as a legal genius.

      She really needs to get out more. A few movies other than "Harold and Kumar" would add immensely to her overall perspective and stock of knowledge.

      Delete
  16. False accusations of racism are just as bad as racism. Any reasonable person reading your comment about the luau would not view this as a racist comment. You were obviously referring to the fact that a bunch of law professors had gone to Hawaii for a free trip on the students' tuition. You obviously didn't know she was Hawaiian.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Nancy 0, Dybbuk 1.

    Game, set and match.

    But I would it be surprised if Leong tries to attack him behind the dumpsters as he leaves the stadium, aided by her "gang" of professor-sympathizers and a few "offended sock puppets" who she uses to come to her rescue.

    ReplyDelete
  18. LOL a bar ethics complaint?!?!?! For criticism of a preftigious law professor?

    I would love to have a chat with the legal counsel and/or bar ethics hotline person with whom she allegedly spoke (am I reading that correctly?). Is it an abuse of process to file a thoroughly unsupported bar complaint without any sort of traditional standing to do so? I would have to think so.

    Nancy is still licensed in California. Isn't SHE in possible violation of Rule 5-100 by threatening to file disciplinary complaints in one-upsmanship over what are, essentially, civil disputes?

    ReplyDelete
  19. The fact that Leong has this much time to devote to this matter during the school year shows that law professors are vastly overpaid and paid handsomely to work part time. Same goes for Leiter.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I just tried reading the comments at LGM. Holy crap, the trolls celebrating Christmas early, apparently.

    I wonder how many of those are from a band called "Nancy and the Sockpuppets"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Every single one saying that dybbuk was wrong. He was absolutely correct in his original analysis, and if Leong had let it be and chalked it up to a shitty article getting a shitty review, all would be well.

      Because of her decision to escalate this into some personal discrimination against her, she has made a fool of herself.

      Delete
    2. Comments get better further down.

      The sock puppets got tired I guess.

      Delete
  21. Nancy Leong's "Open Road" article is stunningly bad.

    As a "law professor", she does not have to do things that other professors or scholars do when writing an article. She doesn't have to design experiments, gather test subjects, collect artifacts from foreign lands, translate ancient languages, measure anything, or interpret any experimental results. All she has to do is read and write. That's it. She doesn't even have to go through any peer review process!

    She teaches "criminal law", despite having no experience in the field. Given that there are 2 million people incarcerated in the US, you'd think there are tens of thousands of lawyers, or more, with actual criminal law experience, either as prosecutors or defense attorneys.

    How does someone with 0 years experience get hired, when there are so many potential experienced candidates? Nepotism? Bribery? Blackmail?

    I actually think that the probable explanation is more insidious and boring than any of these. Nancy Leong has 0 days experience practicing in her field, but her higher-ups have maybe 6 months or 1-2 years. If these higher-ups starting hiring candidates with experience, they themselves would look bad, and maybe feel threatened by their underlings. So, I imagine the established profs and deans like to hire candidates 5% less qualified than themselves. People like Nancy Leong. After 20-50 years of this academic inbreeding and erosion of standards, the average qualifications of law professors has decreased to the drooling idiot point.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A good point. The higher-ups don't want to have their "knowledge" challenged by anyone who actually knows what the law is and how to practice it!

      But risking the wrath of the Leong Machine, I think I know why she was hired instead of any one of the qualified Harvard Law School grads with AUSA experience who would be fine professors. She's young and Asian.

      Female - check.
      Minority - check.

      Oh look, the school can double dip on its faculty diversity stats.

      All she's missing is a fondness for pussy and they have the trifecta.

      Uh, hold on. She married one, right?

      Ding ding ding we have a winner!

      Delete
    2. She has a degree from the #2 (varies 2-3 ea. year) school. She's female and a minority. At the end of the day, the students she teaches will not ever have the same chances or options.

      She clerked. She has no long-term work experience.

      What does this mean?

      Looking back at my own law school experience, I could have had Hazard for Civ. Pro and it wouldn't have mattered. By 3L, I forgot, entirely, everything I learned in 1L. Who taught me the 1L law? Bar-Bri. My professor may as well have been that robot on "The Jetsons" - the one with the filing cabinet drawers for a chest, Mac. Or even Uni-Blab. Or fucking Rosey. Or Astro even.

      It wouldn't have mattered..

      Bar-Bri taught me everything. In 2 months. For a fraction of the cost. If Bar-Bri were allowed, law school could cost about $10 grand and be done at a leisurely pace of a year, allowing for some electives and so on.

      At the end of the day, my degree wasn't from the #2 school. The professors who taught me had their degrees and their cushy teaching gigs, none of which shone down on me or mattered.

      The law profs are living off the backs of their students. Easy money. Easy life. She is, as said above, a cog in the Higher Ed. Scam Machine. Her degrees used to bolster the schools she teaches at and thereby help them entice the Lemmings to sign over their lives and go into massive lifelong non-dischrgeable debt.

      She's smart. She worked hard, obviously. But how she makes her living in the Ed. System is what is at issue. And this goes to collage profs as well.

      Delete
  22. This whole scenario is so bizarre. A law professor (with no experience) is filing an attorney grievance against a practicing attorney because he hurt her feelings. How can this person be trusted to teach the future of our profession?

    ReplyDelete
  23. If she wants to be taken seriously as a law professor why doesn't she address the core of the arguments made her against her? Instead of going on, and on, and on about her supposed victimhood. You know that she is overpaid, underqualified, her scholarship is bad and her pay comes from scamming students.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ... because that would be about as dull as the 4th Amendment.

      Delete
  24. What about the law review that published this piece of junk? Don't law review editors deserve part of the blame?

    ReplyDelete
  25. Yes, the Florida Law Review shares part of the blame here. Someone needs to do an article about how law journals are furthering the law school scam by publishing worthless articles.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Its established that America has way too many law professors churning out way too much scholarship.

      On the other hand, unlike most academic fields, the majority of scholarly journals are student reviewed. Students who are eager to do the chore of reviewing and publishing articles, for free, because it looks good on their resumes. Consequently there seems to be an excessive number of law journals in America.

      The two phenomenon seem to have evolved in tangent and are symbiotic.

      Delete
    2. Let's put "scholarly" and "scholarship" in quotes.

      Delete
  26. I just finished reading Nancy Leong's article. It is terrible. It reads like she didn't go to law school.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. It really is a terrible article.

      Some of the passages I've read would have been considered juvenile even at my high school.

      Delete
  27. Administrative Note: If you post multiple relatively brief comments that start with "you sick fucks," then 1) you're not exactly on firm ground to scorn someone for low-grade sexism and 2) it's probably going to get sucked into Blogger's spam filter.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Nancy's latest scholarship - posting sexy photos of herself on the Asian section of AshleyMadison (yeah, the site for sleazy cheap sexual encounters), then complaining that she received sexual advances online, some of which made reference to the fact she is Asian.

    Sadly, I'm NOT MAKING THIS UP!!!

    This is what happens when an English major with no research training ends up as a professor and has to try and conduct research. This is barely above high school level.

    ReplyDelete
  29. It is time that law review editors be held responsible for the articles they publish. In the end the Florida Law Review published this article.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Dybbuk, don't confuse fictitious smears with inventive smears. Nancy Leong is not inventive. She's never had an original idea in her life. She can't even write a decent narrative.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Excellent comment.

    When we take a firm stand on solid principles, it gives the academic impostors their worst nightmares. They feel terrified at night and helpless during the day, with no recourse except too shout their well-worn clichés to each other. They have a few magic words like "racism" and "sexism" that they've used indiscriminately in the past, whenever they thought it would advance their careers. It worked against a previous generation of academic impostors, but it just looks silly over the Internet.

    Those people just can't handle an inclusive public forum. For evidence of this, refer to Nancy Leong's petulant demand that all online discussions be conducted like the stilted, artificial academic conferences she finds so rewarding and reassuring. Like many professors, she assumes that her own personal status is a public good, that her own preferences are constitutional guarantees and immutable moral laws.

    Most law professors are spoiled children at heart. They can never get over the fact that they got A's on a few papers and exams, and think it entitles them to unlimited deference, as well as endless rewards at our expense. When ordinary people ignore their silly made-up rules, it frustrates then no end. That is the origin of their online tantrums and bizarre stalking behavior.

    We should never forget that Nancy Leong has a huge investment in her own supposed prestige. She admits that she incurred $200,000 in debt to acquire her academic degrees, which are worthless outside of legal academia. To pay off her massive debts, he needs an environment where there are lots of tenure-track jobs, and where she's preferred for those jobs. There's no doubt she's been preferred, not because she's supposedly attractive, but because of her prestigious degrees and her racial identity. In fact, she's practicing racial capitalism at its finest, mortgaging her racial identity to acquire a secure, comfortable, and undemanding job for life. Whenever her investment is threatened, she has to pretend to be a victim, which could protect or even enhance her job prospects.

    As much as I sympathize with Nancy Leong as a pathetic and ignorant victim of the debt-for-prestige scam, I hope her childish scheme to get hired at UCLA falls flat on its face. At UCLA, far more than at DU, a law degree isn't just a leisure good or conspicuous consumption. It's a desperate move, often by a minority applicant far more excluded than Nancy Leong, to acquire social prestige and obtain a professional job, and likely to be funded with massive and unbearable debts. No one, not even a master of the narrative art like Nancy Leong, deserves to build her financial security on the poverty and misery of others. And given the likely tuition decreases, layoffs, and salary cuts at both DU and UCLA, she could be facing default within a couple of years. Her future will then be of no concern to us, but of great interest to the US government.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "...SHE needs an environment where there are lots of tenure-track jobs, and where she's preferred for those jobs."

      I wasn't trying to play gender-bender with Professor Nancy Leong's pronoun, although I'm sure that correcting what I wrote constitutes intolerable harassment on my part. Too bad this isn't a law school, or Professor Nancy Leong could simply demand that I be expelled without a refund.

      Delete
  32. I've got to say that "Professor" Leong seems to have far too much time on her hands. Whatever happened to "scholarship," which was supposedly her claim to fame? How about mentoring all her students, and not just a few fanatical feminists? How about teaching criminal law, of which she knows far too little at present? And, given that a hundred students are waiting for their grades and may want to transfer, why isn't she grading final exams?

    ReplyDelete
  33. I was just reading Brian Leiter's blog, and on Dec. 17 he repeated Nancy Leong's fabrication that dybbuk was harassing and insulting women and minorities. As dybbuk has pointed out, he actually criticizes law professors of all genders and races. Leong is obviously desperate at this point, but Leiter has no apparent motive other than a certain pleasure he takes in malicious accusation.

    ReplyDelete
  34. I will say, I've been honestly disappointed that OTLSS is a Do Not Read The Comments experience, and it's sexism that's always had me reaching for ctrl+w. Most times, no one else even seemed to be questioning the objectifying, creepy comments about women that show up on this site. I never even saw any of the comments about Leong because I'd already come to avoid comment threads here long before she came into your crosshairs. I'd tried pushing back a few times, and mentioning what Campos pointed out - that interspersing your scamblogging with pointless, unnecessary sexism just makes reasonable people in general, women in particular, take a long step back from the movement - but I never saw anyone else challenging the regular sexism that showed up in the comments to this blog. You've created what harassment laws describe as a 'hostile sexual environment'.

    Leong's work is exploitative trash, but the gendered & sexual commentary that you put around your comments on her work is in no way acceptable. If you can't start self-policing that shit like civilized adults, I won't be contributing again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sometimes victims derive a certain consolation from making snide wisecracks about their wealthy oppressors, especially when those oppressors are particularly arrogant, deceitful, or condescending. The oppressors I refer to, of course, are six-figure salaried unqualified lawprofs, and their victims are those who have been rooked for $100,000 or more in exchange for a worthless educational experience and a devalued professional degree.

      That said, I do not entirely dismiss your concern (though I strongly disagree with your "hostile environment" characterization of the comment section here). My suggestion is that you engage more, rather than less. If you see a comment that crosses over into sexism, you could just post a comment in reply saying so. We welcome debate here.

      Delete
    2. The legal concept of a hostile work environment has nothing to do with Nancy Leong's escalating complaints about this blog. Why? Because she works at a law school, not at this blog.

      Those complaints are a way of getting attention that's worked for her in the past. Once dybbuk actually read her article and subjected her to unexpected criticism and ridicule, she had to seek attention on her own terms again. She's getting it now, not from us, but from other professors and the occasional online head case. No doubt she's enjoying it. She's important again.

      Delete
    3. I am perplexed why dybbuk123 believes that this particular professor is his oppressor? Is it that you believe law schools should hire people like you, rather than people like her? I understand you were not a student of hers and are considerably older than her, so it is not like you paid her any tuition money. It does not sound like you are unemployed. It does not sound like you have any first hand or even second hand knowledge of how good a teacher she is or even met her. It is hard to imagine you think you have reason to write that many blog posts about her simply because she wrote an obscure law review article you thought was substandard. Why the obsession here?

      Delete
    4. 7:48, what this whole escapade has to do with is that dybbuk had the temerity to criticise Nancy's "scholarship," and, in retaliation, Nancy dug up dybbuk's personal information (most likely from Leiter) in order to intimidate dybbuk into silence. She threatened to "out" him, report him to his employer, demanded that he call her to "discuss", there were some rumbling of a bar complaint against dybbuk, etc. Leong uses her feminist/racial musings as both a shield and a sword to advance a personal agenda, which many people find disingenuous to forward progress in actual feminist/racial legal scholarship.

      So, yes, there has been some "oppression" because dybbuk refused to join the We-Love-Nancy conga line. Overall, however, this is more a symptom of the law school scam buckling under its own weight as the veil is torn away, applications continue to decline, pressure forces tuition discounts, lawprofs have to generate actual work product that students are willing to pay for, etc.

      Delete
    5. 7:48 a.m.

      The particular professor's law review article was not merely substandard. It reminded me of something that a drunk undergrad might produce-- an idiotic thesis, far more puffery and repetition than actual substance, and more pop culture references than any three issues of People Magazine.

      But it was not just the article that infuriated me-- there were two other factors intertwined:

      (1) that the particular professor who wrote such a lousy article dared to assert the importance of legal scholarship to law students and profession, and to do so quite arrogantly.

      http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2012/08/job-security-the-changing-face-of-legal-education-and-the-bigger-picture.html [See the particular's professor's comment at Aug 11, 2012 8:14:41 PM];

      (2) that the particular professor is utterly lacking in qualifications to profess a subject that I happen to know something about.

      Delete
    6. 7.15 here.

      9.32 - I wasn't talking about Nancy, duh. Scamblogging is not a workplace, no, but constant harping on the appearance and sexual/gendered characteristics of every woman you mention does create a hostile sexual environment for female readers. Posts by Adjunct Law Prof used to attract many of these sexist comments; I wasn't surprised when she quit writing.

      Dybbuk - as I said in my above comment, I tried. Several times. There was never any recognition that constant sexist commentary was even a bad thing. And hey, the tone here is being set by moderators who feel fine writing posts that describe female scammers as 'comely', etc. Why on earth would I want to continue to engage here?

      Delete
    7. Well duh, none of the female readers work here either.

      Many people have no choice but to support themselves with work, which is why the "hostile work environment" became a standard legal formula. Trying to sound legal by expanding the formula to Internet sites is dishonest at best, and often a pretext for repression. Women and sensitive men do have a choice not to read or visit any site they find "hostile." Others may not find it hostile. Unless there are threats of illegal activity, it's not a legal issue.

      Delete
  35. Well, this isn't a faculty lounge, if that's what you mean.

    Pour yourself some more brandy. Merry Christmas.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Replies
    1. Oh, come now. The term "poetic justice" is so 19th-Century and Anglocentric.
      The 21st Century is the age of narrative justice.

      Delete
  37. Interesting how anti-sexist Nancy Leong uses the term "manchild" on her twitter page. Also, she referred to Dybukk as "you and your little friends" and "children." So, to her, some men are children.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Nancy Leong really likes to use the term man child. Just google nancy leong and man child. Here is a recent example--"Attempting to characterize women as children is thus yet another manifestation of misogyny. Ironically, however, it exposes the misogynists as the ones lacking in the maturity to understand the insecurities that drive their own behavior and to recognize the weaknesses in their own arguments. Indeed, we might ask whether misogyny is a defining feature of the man-child." http://www.nancyleong.com/uncategorized/misogyny-and-the-man-child/#more-61

    So she can call a man a "man child": and it's okay but when a man calls a woman a child he is a misogynist.

    ReplyDelete
  39. If N.L. can not take criticism, she should stay out of the classroom. I would recommend that students boycott her class and not sign for it.

    ReplyDelete