You academics have a long way to go to achieve diversity.

I’ve actually given some thought to asking the kinds of questions that Jeff poses, though perhaps more subtly. A problem of course is to avoid conveying the message that an answer evidencing a working class background might be used against the candidate…

Or does your faculty continue to exist in an “Old America” universe where America is straight, and either Black or White, privileging these categories by minimizing the existence of others?

To mm. Yes, I completely understand. And people without that education do not have any of the other support you speak of. Here is one of the few times I can boast about my school — at least the central administration. Last year our hiring process was maybe a little, shall we say, sketchy. So this year representatives from the Univesity legal office came over to instruct us on what to do and not to do. Whether people will actually do it or not is yet to be seen but the stress by the central administration is to ask exactly the types of questions I listed in order to find people with truely diverse background and who have actually had to overcome barriers.

Frankly, I think you are silly not to be in the market. If you get a job you will quickly find that the track is not all that fast.

I suffer from precisely the phenomenon you describe: what is usually called a “lack of confidence” that feels to me like a realistic view of the world.

My friends and colleagues–some of whom are elite professors urging me to enter the law teaching market–are baffled by this. Given my resume, they simply cannot fathom why I would hesitate to jump into law teaching. I have the big names ready and willing to support my application; I have the stats. Yet I am hung up on my uncertainty of being “qualified”, the idea that I need to know more, to learn more to make up for my background.

This is not an argument about the practices of law school hiring, of course. I am hung up on my own doubts. But others have made the point that if hiring committees viewed positively “overcoming obstacles”–if my background counted for me, instead of against me–I would be more willing to take the chance.

Forgive me if I’m being dense — which is a distinct possibility — but I’m still a little confused. You write above “I do tend to think of elite in terms of education.” But my interpretation of your original list of questions (pasta expertise aside) is that they go to social/economic class. So does your point (with which I agree), that even if a working class person goes to Harvard, they might not feel (or, one might add, be perceived by a hiring committee) the same as someone from an upper middle class background.

As for anons request for empirical evidence. If you look at the web sites run by Leiter you will find data regarding the schools law professors attended. You will find that those hiring tend to hire people who are similar to themselves. As for the productivity of law professors, I am not sure how to put a link in a comment but if you go over to moneylaw you will find a report on an empirical study indicating that there is no difference in terms of scholarly productivity between graduates of elite law schools now in legal education and those who did not graduate from elite schools.

Anyone can sit at a computer and type their thoughts, but it doesn’t advance the ball or even create a productive forum for debate. Your future blog posts might be interesting if you backed up your musings with some actual evidence.

Or does “elite” here mean “elite training,” as in, did well at one of the highest-ranked law schools, then did a year or two in a prestigious clerkship and/or “elite” big law firm. There’s certainly an overlap of this kind of elite and the social/economic background elite, but it’s not a complete overlap and it’s not the same thing. Still, faculties may be more comfortable with people like this (because they are like themselves) also.

There’s also an argument that folks from this second type of “elite” may be more likely to be productive scholars (a big part of the teaching job the original post didn’t mention). Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think the type of “elite” credentials listed in the second paragraph are the be-all, end-all of publishing potential, but it’s not indefensible to think it’s some evidence, all else being equal.

Having said all that, if the main thrust of this post was that law schools should be aware of class background and related issues in hiring, including trying to overcome the “I’m more comfortable with them because their socio-economic background is more like mine,” then I agree.