Comments on: Has the Tide Turned for Conservatives in the Academy?

By: David Zaring

David Zaring — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 07:22:09 +0000

Pure speculation, of course, based on what little I know about the public law people at the school. Others may disagree.

By: Guy

Guy — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 05:00:47 +0000

I teach at MN and I have no idea what you’re talking about there. Can you please elaborate? Guy

By: nunzia

nunzia — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 22:40:30 +0000

is that really so bad?

By: David Zaring

David Zaring — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 22:46:52 +0000

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…..

By: Bruce

Bruce — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 22:15:25 +0000

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!).

By: Michael Dukakis

Michael Dukakis — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:28:03 +0000

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.

By: David Zaring

David Zaring — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:06:23 +0000

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.

By: E

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 15:33:55 +0000

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….

By: David Zaring

David Zaring — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 08:23:03 +0000

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.

By: Dave Hoffman

Dave Hoffman — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 07:48:42 +0000

Couldn’t agree more.

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2005/06/passing_as_a_co.html