Tuskegee University, a historically Black university located in rural Alabama, is hosting its third law-school fair later this month. Ninety law schools, nearly half of those accredited by the ABA, will send representatives to meet prospective students.
The list features mostly toilets and über-toilets. Not a single school in Tier 0, 1, or 2 will be present: no Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Columbia, NYU, or Stanford. The only representatives of Tier 3 will be Michigan, Northwestern, and Penn; even Duke and Virginia, the only two law schools in the entire South that are worth attending, will not be there. Various trap schools and crap schools from Tier 4 plan to attend. The rest of the group will be from Tiers 5 and 6, both near (Faulkner, Samford, Elon) and far (Texas Southern, the two John Marshalls, UMass Dartmouth). Oddly enough, Cooley is not on the list, despite incessantly trumpeting its racial diversity.
Since only three of the ninety schools are worth attending even in principle (and it must be said that one of them, Northwestern, is sliding towards Tier 4), this fair does a disservice to its largely Black target audience. It frames the other 87 schools as respectable establishments that hold out promise to Black people, when in fact they are very poor choices for anyone without money, connections, or both—which includes the bulk of the Black people to whom Tuskegee is marketing the law-school scam.
Disingenously, "Dr. Tammy Laughlin, assistant professor of political science, noted that the annual fair has become an integral part of efforts to support Tuskegee students’ admission to a wide variety of state, regional and Ivy League law schools"—when the only Ivy League institution attending this event is Penn, not exactly what comes to mind when people think of the Ivy League. (Since the Ivy League is an athletic conference of undergraduate institutions, "Ivy League law schools" is not a meaningful category anyway.) This fair drives Tuskegee students into life-destroying indebtedness for the sake of a decidedly inferior law degree that will serve them poorly when they look for work.
Booker T. Washington, the first president of what was to become Tuskegee University, is widely remembered as an Uncle Tom for his role in the contemptible Atlanta Compromise. Against the advice of many other Black leaders of his day, he advocated that Black people submit to Jim Crow—"the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly"—and gradually convince their white "friends" of their worth through the excellence of their industrial and agricultural labor. However well meant, this law-school fair continues Washington's shabby legacy of subjugating Black people to white interests—in this case, those of the mostly white law-school scamsters who would fatten themselves by saddling Black people with impossible debt and false hopes of advancement through the overcrowded and declining legal profession.
Maybe I've become immune to the scam law schools, but the fact that this college is sponsoring a "law school fair" is indefensible. Anybody who has bothered to look knows that most law schools are flat-out scams, designed only to extract as much money from each mark, er student, as possible, before expelling them into a marketplace that doesn't need them and won't hire them.
ReplyDeleteSo scammers are gonna scam-and it's up to the colleges-in this case Tuskegee-to look out for their students, or at least not be complicit in the scam.
In this case, that's not the issue-Tuskegee is fully responsible for sanitizing the scam, and allowing gullible undergrads to be scam fodder. They ought to be ashamed, but clearly aren't, as this apparently been going on for several years. It's no wonder the scam still thrives.
It’s not up to the colleges to look after their students. This is the type of thinking that annihilates civilizations and it is this type of thinking that produced the law school scam.
DeleteColleges and law schools are their to make money and a good life for the administrators and the professors. Period. End of story.
They don’t care about the students. They don’t care about the tax payers. They care about providing guaranteed and high incomes to the stake holders associated with that institution.
This is why liberalism fails, will continue to fail and will continue to cause calamities. The people advocating social responsibility, the greater good, etc. are playing people’s emotions to extract money and power. From Bernie Sanders down to the lowest scam dean. People are selfish, greedy, risk averse and seek pleasure over pain. Any policy begins from that vantage point. If you start asking that “colleges look out for their students,” you are advocating for disaster. You get rid of the government guarantee. Once you do that, greedy and selfish lenders won’t allow greedy and selfish professors to steal. This won’t happen because the greedy and selfish lender cares about the student. This will happen because the greedy and selfish lender knows he or she won’t get paid back by students attending crapola law school.
I’m not surprised that liberals know how to con the general population. People that work 9-5, don’t want to take risks, and seek a pain free existence want someone to tell them that the investment banker or lawyer working 80 hours a week under intense pressure deserves less. They fall for this con. Over and over and over. The wealth have figured out that this is something they can exploit with maximum efficiency, and the tax burden keeps shifting to labor. Harder and harder. The envy of the proles is the greatest gift the rentier class has ever been given. Instead of fighting it now, they embrace it, and with devastating efficiency.
What I find absolutely mind blowing is how anyone that’s been a victim of the law school scam or knows about the law school scam can still hold out any hope that any institution, governed by human beings, is going to protect other people’s interests, especially when risk-free money is on the table.
It’s unbelievable to me. Is Brian Leiter or any of the other cadre of scamsters conservative? If you attend any of these parasites’ lectures, all you are going to hear about is the greater good, social responsibility, higher taxes on the rich, etc. how much damage do we have to let happen before everyone understands that it’s dog eat dog out there: no one is going to look out for you. It’s kill or be killed. Tuskegee University wants your money. They don’t care if you are white, black, yellow, red, green, whatever. If they have to use racial policy and history to get people riled up so they can make a good living, they are going to do it,
And incidentally, for those accusing Booker T. Washington of being an “Uncle Tom.” I suggest you read what he has to say. He predicted hucksters and con men seeking a quick buck, whether from his race or from the white race feigning an interest to help, would use racial politics to the detriment of African Americans. When you look at Baltimore, Detroit, etc, Thats exactly what happened. Using racial politics to fleece some student loans from unsuspecting minorities and other poor people is just the cherry on the scam cake.
But let’s keep going, let’s keep voting for shit that’s contrary to human nature and let’s see where we wind up.
In addition to hyperbole that would make even the most hardened scamster blush-"this is the type of thinking that annihilates civilizations"-your post makes zero sense, with a pinball style analysis attacking liberals, human nature, liberals again, the declaring "let's keep voting for shit that's contrary to human nature" even though Trump and his crew-none of them liberals-have ruled for four years and will likely get another four.
DeleteAnd sorry, but HBCU have, as their mission, a responsibility to not allow themselves to be complicit in ripping off their students. The fact that this school has reflects poorly on that school, not on its original and now apparently forgotten education mission.
Is the education system corrupt? Absolutely! Does that justify your bizarre social Darwninism? NO. And it's a disaster now-because nobody is looking our for anybody; if schools actually looked out for their students, maybe, just maybe, it would be different. Right now, all the schools see is a dollar sign, period full stop.
It's clear you view yourself as a latter-day Spartan, more than willing to carry the infirm outside the city walls and tossing them to their fate. Well, good luck with that.
Most universities nowadays pursue private interests under the signboard of an eleemosynary mission. Tuskegee had a noble purpose in the nineteenth century and has certainly contributed to the worthy cause of advancement for Black people, but by joining forces with the law-school scam it is selling Black people up the river. I wouldn't mind so much if Tuskegee were seen as another goddamn corporation that rips the public off, but it is in fact seen as a valiant benefactor of Black people.
Delete@4:44,
DeleteStomp your feet up and down as much as you like. The same appeal to emotion is what produced the higher education scam and many other scams and grifts that are annihilating this country.
Let’s walk into any law school classroom (or for that matter college classroom) in the US. You will find your rhetoric and emotional appeals reproduced to the T. These dirty, lying, whores are going to talk about social responsibility, helping people, responsibility to society, etc. But when it comes time to act, they will make the most Rhino of corporate Republicans blush. No standards. No plan for changing the curriculum to deal with global competition. No concern for the students. Just straight up risk-free, public funded, unaccountable public pillaging. They’ll increase tuition every single year. They’ll try to destroy anyone that gets in their way. They’ll yell racism, sexism, and any other bullshit of the day to keep collecting. When someone points out the reality of human nature, they’ll detract with appeals to emotion, just like you did. You know why? Because that’s human nature. Even Paul Campos, who is a very good man, isn’t going to leave his job as a professor: his survival comes first, scam be damned.
The people that founded this country built a system that was realistic about the darker side of human nature. You can’t give people unaccountable power because no matter what they say, no matter what appeals to theory or emotion they make, when the rubber hits the road, they’ll act out for their benefit at the expense of everyone else. With this reality in mind, you need checks and balances. You take away the government guarantee, and this nonesense is over in 24 hours. Oh they’ll be individuals cut from your cloth, wailing in the streets about how some poor minority couldn’t attend Harvard because of that change, yelling racism and other garbage.
The proof surfaces over and over:
“ And sorry, but HBCU have, as their mission, a responsibility to not allow themselves to be complicit in ripping off their students.”
But they will rip off their students because ripping off their students provides a good result for them. Do you know how they will continue to rip them off though? People like you. Any attempt to intervene and let market forces annihilate these scammers is going to be met with emotional appeals. Any attempt to make their students aware that no one is going to take care of them if they don’t take care of themselves is, again, going to be met with emotional appeal. The emotional appeal disarms the student. The student thinks “hey, this is an institution to help minorities, why would they hurt me? Also, why would the government give them a blank check to hurt me? The government is here to help me.” No one is here to help.
Even the commenters on this site repeatedly note that they would take a job as a law school professor if they could, and you can’t hate the players, just the game. But you can hate the players when they lie. You can hate the players when they appeal to emotion to distract.
Who’s the biggest hero of this movement? Paul Campos. Why? Because he left his job in protest, sacrificing himself to fight the scam? No. He’s the hero because he’s honest. “Hey, this shit is a scam, attend if you want, but don’t complain when you are ruined.” That’s it. That’s the most you can hope from someone on the left. And it’s not a trivial thing.
But in terms of how to act in the world? In terms of avoiding destruction? It’s simple: people will fuck you if it’s in their interest, so don’t let them. Understand no one is going to look out for you but you. You don’t believe me? Don’t complain when the liberals bury you to go to some conference in Hawaii.
The person making the emotional appeal is you, with your accusations of foot-stomping and wailing in the streets and constant efforts to both "disarm" and "destroy" and the like-maybe you ought to look in the mirror. Your post is one long screed, heavy on emotion, light on problem solving. It's all "liberals" and "Rhinos" to you. And what exactly is your solution? Don't let people "fuck you"? And how's that working for you? Not too well, at least in terms of constructing a coherent argument. You simply hate people; no need to call it anything other than that.
DeleteSo here's an idea: how about the government get out of the student loan business. Obama didn't do it; Trump isn't doing it either, which punctures your beloved liberal v conservative dichotomy.
And Campos is a hero-to who, exactly? Not to me-yeah, he complains about the scam, but still cashes his paychecks every week. And here's a fun fact-before he glommed onto the law school scam, he wrote many an op-ed about how modern medicine discriminated against fat people. He even wrote a book-the Obesity Myth(I think). My guess is that with interest in the scam waning, he'll join Lizzo in taking on Jillian Michaels.
And here's another fun fact: the HBCUs had as their mission and express obligation to look out for their students, since their students were getting so royally screwed by larger society. And the fact that the HBCUs have no sold out to the scam is a travesty; all-and it's not just Tuskegee, there's Bethune-Cookman joining with Arizona Summit-who assist in the scam ought to be closed.
I'll let others decide which of us is "stomping our feet" but clearly, it's you. Actually deciding not to screw your students isn't an emotional appeal-it's the right thing to do, especially for colleges like Tuskegee which had an express mission to assist. But it's clear that anything beyond the most basic Darwinism is beyond your reach.
“ So here's an idea: how about the government get out of the student loan business. Obama didn't do it; Trump isn't doing it either, which punctures your beloved liberal v conservative dichotomy.”
DeleteRight, that’s the answer, but how do you think rich professors and university adminstrators are going to react if Trump does that? “The rich white guy is a racist and he doesn’t want minorities to get an education!!!!”
“ Actually deciding not to screw your students isn't an emotional appeal-it's the right thing to do, especially for colleges like Tuskegee which had an express mission to assist.”
But that’s a lie. It never was about that. The post criticizes Booker T Washington for being an “Uncle Tom.” Read some of his writings and see what he has to say on this topic, and what advice he gives African Americans if they want to get ahead (hint: it’s strikingly similar to the advice some posters give to prospective law students here).
The point of Tuskegee and every other institution that consists of self interested creates is to benefit the constitutes of that institution. Period. End of story.
Law school professors don’t want to hurt law students, it’s just that law students are a means for them enjoying a good life. If it comes down between the law student becoming a debt serf and the professor having to work, the professor is going to make the student a debt serf.
It’s not that anything beyond social Darwinism is beyond my reach, it’s that there is nothing else. The best you can hope for is people aren’t going to lie, like Campos.
But yeah, we agree. Get the government out. Then these jackals can’t do this anymore. But do you understand that if you try to do that, you’ll be called a heartless and bigoted racist that doesn’t care about other human beings, etc.
So you tell me, what philosophy is hurting people more, what you call Social Darwinism or the one where you demand people act against their self interest in conducting their affairs? Why is the government in the student loan business? How did it happen? Was it people like me that understand what human beings are really about advocating for something like that or was it people that were advocating for social justice, and when confronted with the argument that this disaster was going to happen, responded that the proponent of said argument is a heartless person that expects too little of human beings.
Tuskegee doesn’t care. They don’t care that you cited that mission statement. They care about not having to work in the private sector, tenure, vacations and an overall east life. You know when they’ll cite their mission statement? When someone tries and takes the honey from the feds.
John Glubb's Rise and Fall of Empires indicates that in the final stages of any empire there are lots of universities and the population becomes highly educated. So @1:58 has far better evidence backed reasoning than the likely law school admin @4:44 that is busy attacking him and trying to silence him.
DeleteNot that I care or agree about most of it. But I'd rather see someone take the time to write their thoughts and attack the scammers than watch the scammers come on here with their poorly written blocks of text just attacking everyone. If you don't want to read the longer posts and respond on merits, then just shut up and ignore it, like I pretty much did. These transparent attempts to drive off readers however don't impress most of us that have been around for awhile, and seen enough of idiots trying to silence anyone that has a thought.
I'm back-and surprisingly enough, we do agree. The government needs to get out of the loan business.
DeleteOur only point of disagreement is regarding law professors. I'd agree they don't "hate" their students, but that's not an admirable thing. It takes a fair amount of energy to hate. Instead, the professors(at my small law school, anyway) made it clear we were utterly and completely insignificant; they didn't care one iota about any of us. We had professors who taught three classes in sequence, and still made it a point not to know anyone's name. All they cared about was their paycheck, as you point out.
And regarding Booker T Washington-well, read my posts-you'll see no criticism from me. First, it's risible that a bunch of white guys sitting at computer keyboards living a century later launch attacks against a black man living during a period of both de jure and de facto racial discrimination. He lived in a time and a place where Jim Crow ruled, and if he said or did the wrong thing(according to very subjective local standards) he could have well ended up dead. And that's not hyperbole; lynchings were rife in that time and place.
So we agree on that, too; it's clearly case of trying to make some progress as opposed to none.
But OG loses all credibility here, as he declares Washington-lumping him in with Gandhi and King-as flunkeys. OG clearly appreciates the violent, as his dismissal of two practitioners of non-violence is surprising and disappointing. Both King and Gandhi sought change through non violence, and suffered violence because of it, and were imprisoned because of it. If that makes them "flunkeys" then sign me up. But I don't know that I have the resolve to embrace all the principles of satyagraha, although I will always admire those who do.
But I'll chalk that up to OG having a bad day, as his revisionist history regarding Denmark is risible. An alliance with the Soviets was not in the cards; look up the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Nazis and the Soviets were best buddies; in fact they carved up Poland together. And the Soviets only joined the Allies after the Nazis betrayed them and launched a sneak attack on the Soviets in 1941. By that time all of Western Europe was already conquered by the Germans. It's a lovely canard that the Soviets won WWII single-handledly; that's the view now embarced by Putin, but unfortunately it leaves out many, many important facts(like the alliance with the Nazis).
And not sure how this blog could get further from The Law School Scam, but there you have it.
I stand by what I said about King, Gandhi, and Washington. And if you want to talk about violence, consider the very violent partition of India in which Gandhi had a hand, not to mention his support of British colonialism and genocide against Africans on the provision that Indians get to play second fiddle to the "superior" whites. "Non-violent" Gandhi also was also known for turning Indian revolutionaries in to the British occupiers and having young women join him naked in bed by way of proving his supposed godliness.
DeleteW.E.B. Du Bois and other Black leaders lived through that time, too (Du Bois outlived Washington by decades), but condemned Washington's Uncle Tom policy. Clearly they thought that more progress could be achieved and that pandering to the white overlords was not the way to go.
What is revisionist, indeed downright obscene, is your linking of the Nazis and the Soviets as "best buddies". The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was brought about precisely because Britain and France refused to join the Soviet Union against fascist Germany. It was a brilliant diplomatic maneuver that bought the Soviet Union precious time to build up its defenses in preparation for the German invasion that was only a matter of time. Poland can blame its own government for fleeing to Rumania, thereby creating a political vacuum (the Polish state ceased to exist) that obviously had to be filled. It is also not true that the Soviet Union and Germany "carved up Poland", though it is true that Germany, Poland, and Hungary, at the anti-Soviet instigation of Britain and France, carved up Czechoslovakia. As for the German conquest of nearly all of Western Europe, I don't see how you can possibly lay that at the feet of the Soviet Union, which tried repeatedly, even desperately, to form an anti-fascist alliance with Britain and France only to be rebuffed by both of them—precisely because they wanted Germany to invade and destroy the Soviet Union, much as they and the other European and North American powers obstructed the anti-fascist resistance in Spain (the Soviet Union was the only state in the world to send military aid—including hardware such as aircraft that it urgently needed for its own defenses against the invasion being prepared by Germany). Some "Allies" Britain and France were! They and the US too were crypto-Axis.
Anyway, this does indeed bring us too far from the topic.
I see my Toilet (Chicago-Kent) is still interesting in scamming Lemmings.
ReplyDelete1. OG, your criticism of Booker T. Washington is off base.
ReplyDeleteFirst, you judge the actions of a figure from the past by contemporary standards rather than the reality of his time. The Atlanta Compromise was articulated in 1895. The next year SCOTUS, then comprised of eight northerners and one southerner, made its infamous Plessy v. Ferguson ruling by a vote of 8-1. How far could one get in a civil rights movement at that time? Which brings us to the second point, the generally sound policy of fighting the war you can win. We all face situations in life where the deck is stacked against us and there is nothing we can do about it. In such situations it is almost always best to forgo dying for a cause to prove a point and instead to get what we can and live to fight another day. When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark King Christian and his ministers realized the country would be overrun before help could arrive. Their only choice was whether to get a lot of young Danish men killed in battle, a lot of civilians killed in the crossfire and a lot of property and infrastructure destroyed. They opted not to resist, choosing to fight the war they could win. They gathered intelligence for the allies and sabotaged. More importantly, had the Nazis seen the Danes as a hostile, occupied people and not "The Model Protectorate" it is highly doubtful that the Danish Underground could have succeeded in doing what no other nation could do, saving the lives of almost the entire Jewish population of their country.
Washington fought the war he could win and made real progress for his people, about as good as anyone could have gotten in that era. The war that could be won came sixty years later when SCOTUS switched sides and changes in society made agitation for full-scale civil rights more feasible. These included a post-war boom that gave northerners the spare time and resources to support the cause, television bringing the mindless brutality of Jim Crow into northern living rooms and rapidly expanding retail chains taking heat from northern consumers when their southern outlets discriminated.
2. Returning to the topic at hand, let's be honest. I cannot say what lies at the root of this but the law school admissions playing field is heavily slanted to the advantage of minorities Anyone unfamiliar with the incident at Georgetown in around 1989-1991 involving a student named Tim Maguire should Google it. The gist of it is that to reach their goals of diversity the highest ranked schools dip a little deeper into the talent pool of minorities. This forces schools at the next level down to dip steeper still, and the next level even more, and so on with the problem compounding at each level. At the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel toilets that no one should attend the dipping down must be falling off the bottom of the chart. I was once asked to represent my alma mater at a law school fair at one of New England's top liberal arts colleges. Only a small fraction of the number of schools at the Tuskegee fair were there and zero toilets. To see so many toilets that practice near-open admissions lining up for that fair suggests to me that they are "rolling around in the mud and the blood and the beer" fighting each other for anyone capable of signing promissory notes.
I judge Booker T. Washington by the standards of his day. Plenty of Black leaders, including notably the great W.E.B. Du Bois, rejected the Atlanta Compromise. Du Bois called Washington "the Great Accommodator", which is a polite way of saying "Uncle Tom" if not "Quisling".
DeleteHistory has shown—and had shown long before 1895—that Washington's strategy doesn't work. The oppressor embraces flunkeys like Washington, Gandhi, and King while disparaging revolutionaries who actually do bring about progress. The civil-rights movement involved open warfare and bloodshed. You say that nothing more than capitulation to Jim Crow was possible in Washington's day—but to what extent did Washington and people like him facilitate the decision in Plessy?
The Brown decisions, Loving v. Virginia, and many others were heavily political ones won in a context of increasingly militant struggle and the international embarrassment that the US faced as it was compared unfavorably to the Soviet Union and other states in the department of human rights. The Supreme Court came around not because of the enlightenment of its judges or of Northerners' having "the spare time and resources" to take up the cause of civil rights for Black people but because the US was looking like the world's biggest asshole, which it was, and was threatened by internal revolutionary movements for freedom and even for Black national liberation.
I don't agree that Denmark's only choice was to knuckle under to Nazi Germany: another choice (passed up) was an early alliance with the Soviet Union, which in fact won the war almost single-handedly (though Yanks and Brits arrogantly claim the credit).
Yes, the law schools are eager to draw in racialized people. Harvard wants them so that it won't look like the odious preserve of rich WASPs and Jews that it is; Cooley wants them because they are its bread and butter. You're also right about the cascading effect of dipping deeper (by LSAT score, let's say) in order to draw in enough racialized people: Harvard steals from Michigan's pool, Michigan has to go after Vanderbilt's, and so on, until Cooley takes just about anything with a pulse. The same effect has been seen in recent years with the applicant pool generally: as it shrank, the better schools poached the lesser schools' traditional applicants, thereby driving all schools down.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/arizona_summit_bethune_cookman_infilaw_hbcu_affiliation
ReplyDeleteArizona Scumpit was trying something similar before it finally went tits up.
In your article you said Northwestern was at risk of becoming "tier 4", what makes you think that? Not trying to question you or anything I'm genuinely curious. I was recently accepted and currently debating retaking my lsat (currently low 170s) and reapplying next year, but their BL + FC numbers seem solid so am thinking of just going. What would you recommend?
ReplyDelete