Has the Tide Turned for Conservatives in the Academy?
posted by David Zaring
Sorry. Another hiring post. Tis the season.
Conservative academics have long moaned that they face hostility in the academy, and I imagine that this may still be true at some institutions. But since there aren’t that many conservatives in on law school faculties to begin with, I thought it might be idly worth speculating whether the few that do decide to teach are entering a land of milk and honey. Harvard invited mostly conservatives for a look at its con law position, some think the place is on a right wing hiring binge. As best as I can tell, Illinois, Minnesota, and Notre Dame have developed concentrations in Republicanism, possibly they hope to imitate schools like George Mason and San Diego, which, according to the conventional wisdom, have looked rightward for hiring, and seen a dramatic improvement in their repuations. And that’s not all: the University of St Thomas and Ave Maria are new law schools with socially conservative agendas; they need to hire faculty, too. I’ll leave other tea-leaf readers to try to figure out whether other faculties keep a particular eye out for friends of the supply side and states’ rights.
It all sounds very political and possibly a bit cynical, but, while we’re idly speculating, I’d note that there may be good reasons for these faculties to look for Federalist Society credentials. You’re likely to get yourself new colleagues who are likely to do revisionist, but hardly incomprehensible, work, who are often comfortable with economic analysis, who might be willing to teach corporate subjects, and who will not find it difficult to plug themselves into a well-resourced, energetic network of teachers at other law schools.
Indeed, many schools may want a conservative or two on their faculty for the same reason they’d like, say, an ADR specialist – so they’ve got people on all of the conference circuits, capable of participating in a field that could, as they say, blow up. Even Yale has hired a conservative or two recently. Talk about shifting the paradigm.
March 14, 2006 at 12:16 am
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Responses (10)
Dave Hoffman - March 14, 2006 at 12:48 am
Couldn’t agree more.
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2005/06/passing_as_a_co.html
David Zaring - March 14, 2006 at 1:23 am
Hmmm. Maybe we’re not breaking unprecedentedly new ground here. I’ll henceforth characterize this post as a tribute to Dave H., tricked out with some hiring gossip.
E - March 14, 2006 at 8:33 am
This only makes sense if you don’t call law and economics scholars “conservative” (Yale, for example, has hired a large number of these in the last decade). Of course, once you define one of the major conservative movements on law faculties as “non-conservative” the rest follows easily….
David Zaring - March 14, 2006 at 10:06 am
True – but I don’t think of people like Ayres and Donohue as conservative. And generally, I wouldn’t call law and economics scholarship necessarily conservative, though I agree the movement probably started out that way.
Michael Dukakis - March 14, 2006 at 10:28 am
I think you’re right that the legal academy is discriminating less against conservatives than it used to. They still have a harder time, but we don’t laugh at them like we used to.
Bruce - March 14, 2006 at 3:15 pm
David, it sounds like from your post this sounds like an instance where Richard Epstein is right about discrimination — the market is ameliorating it, because the irrational discrimination of some has created “buying opportunities” for others (good, conservative scholars, on the cheap!).
David Zaring - March 14, 2006 at 3:46 pm
I’ve never thought of myself as an Epsteinian (or a Beckerian, he holds a similar view), but you may be right, Bruce. I suppose one question would be whether right-wingers are a moneyball choice because of their right-wingerness, or because that’s correlated with some other characteristic we’d want.
Okay, now I’m burying my own post with my comments. Kinda usurping the role of the readership around here…..
nunzia - March 16, 2006 at 3:40 pm
is that really so bad?
Guy - March 19, 2006 at 10:00 pm
I teach at MN and I have no idea what you’re talking about there. Can you please elaborate? Guy
David Zaring - March 20, 2006 at 12:22 am
Pure speculation, of course, based on what little I know about the public law people at the school. Others may disagree.
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