The Faculty Lounge

Statement from Jewish Faculty and Staff at Northwestern

The Statement with a frequently updated list of signatories is here.

Statement from Jewish faculty and staff at Northwestern University

As Jewish faculty and staff at Northwestern University, we write today to defend the values of academic freedom, pluralism and independence that animate Northwestern and undergird its commitment to teaching, learning, and research. We write to dispel misconceptions that are being wielded by outsiders to weaken the university and harm our students. The fact that U.S. government leaders are making unwarranted threats to our university and stripping rights from students, faculty, and researchers nationwide in the name of Jews is deeply offensive to us. We believe it should stop.

In announcing Title VI investigations of 60 universities, including Northwestern, the U.S. secretary of education spoke of “relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year.” As Jews who walk the campus every day and teach in its classrooms, we can reliably report that this depiction bears little resemblance to life at Northwestern. Some of us have been disappointed at times by Northwestern’s response to campus events. We recognize that antisemitism is present on college campuses, as it is in the world. Yet a fair-minded assessment would reveal a faculty and a university administration committed to the education of our students through rigorous and respectful debate.

We come from different points on the political compass. We express our identities as Jews in myriad ways. But we are united by the conviction that our Jewishness must not be used as a cudgel to silence the vigorous exchange of ideas that lies at the heart of university life. To punish Northwestern financially or to limit academic freedom in the name of protecting Jewish students could itself spark antisemitism — and would be an injustice to those very students and an injury to American society at large.

AALS Section on Aging and Law Online Book Event - Hot Flash: How the Law Ignores Menopause and What We Can Do About It

Date: Thursday, May 8 from 1 – 2 pm ET/12 – 1 pm CT/11 am – 12 pm MT/10 – 11 am PT

The event is free and open to the all; preregistration is required, here.

The authors of the book Hot Flash: How the Law Ignores Menopause and What We Can Do About It (Stanford University Press, 2024) and commentators will explore the multifaceted challenges and opportunities at the intersections between and among menopause, culture, and law. Like menstruation, menopause is a largely involuntary and age-related phase of life that has long been enveloped in silence and shame. An estimated 46.5 million individuals worldwide experience menopause annually. The authors and commentators will critically examine the current state of research on menopause, unraveling its impact on individuals within the context of legal frameworks and cultural norms around gender, aging, and work.

Details after the fold.

CFP: Seventh Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum

Call for Proposals for the Seventh Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum

November 7-8, 2025

LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Building on the success of the Equality Law Scholars’ Forum held over the past seven years, and in the spirit of academic engagement and mentoring in the area of Equality Law, we (Tristin Green, Loyola Law Los Angeles; Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University Law; and Leticia Saucedo, UC Davis Law) are thrilled to announce the Seventh Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum to be held in Fall 2025. 

This Scholars’ Forum seeks to provide junior scholars with commentary and critique and to provide scholars at all career stages the opportunity to engage with new scholarly currents and ideas.  We hope to bring together scholars with varied perspectives (e.g., critical race theory, class critical theory, queer theory, feminist legal theory, law and economics, law and society) across fields (e.g., criminal system, education, employment, family, health, immigration, property, tax) and with work relevant to many diverse identities (e.g., age, class, disability, national origin, race, sex, sexuality) to build bridges and to generate new ideas in the area of Equality Law.  

We will select five or six relatively junior scholars (untenured, newly tenured, or prospective professors) in the U.S. to present papers from proposals submitted in response to this Call for Proposals. In so doing, we will select papers that cover a broad range of topics within the area of Equality Law.  Leading senior scholars will provide commentary on each of the featured papers in an intimate and collegial setting.  The Forum will take place all day Friday through lunch on Saturday.  Participants are expected to attend the full Forum.  The Equality Law Scholars’ Forum will pay transportation and accommodation expenses for participants and will host a dinner on Friday evening.  

This year’s Forum will be held on November 7-8, 2025, at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.

Junior scholars are invited to submit abstracts of proposed papers, 3-5 pages in length, by May 15, 2025.   

Full drafts of papers must be available for circulation to participants by October 21, 2025. 

Note: We urge submission of proposals for drafts that will still be substantially in progress in November 2025 over drafts that will be in late-stage law review edits at that time.

Proposals should be submitted to:

Leticia Saucedo, UC Davis Law, [email protected]. Electronic submissions via email are preferred.

Former Harvard Morgue Chief Pleads Guilty to Illegal Sale of Body Parts

The latest black market body parts scandal is here. Admittedly it's not the body parts use case I generally imagine when it comes to black market biological material: 

A former manager of the morgue at Harvard Medical School will plead guilty to stealing body parts that had been donated for research and selling them for thousands of dollars to people who collected them as macabre curiosities, according to court documents.

 

He “plead guilty to stealing body parts that had been donated for research and selling them for thousands of dollars to people who collected them as macabre curiosities, according to court documents.”

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— Kim Krawiec (@kimkrawiec.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 11:28 AM

More On Assisted Dying

Is here, via Al Roth. See my prior discussion here.

 

More on medical aid in dying

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— Kim Krawiec (@kimkrawiec.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 3:20 PM

House Ways and Means Publishes RFI on OPOs

The House Ways and Means Committee has published a Request for Information on the Activities of Tax-Exempt Organ Procurement Organizations. The screenshot below of page 3 is probably enough for you to get the idea. I imagine that reports like this one were relevant to the decision to investigate. HT: Frank McCormick

Born in Chicago

Paul Butterfield's iconic "Born in Chicago," the first cut on his first album, was written by Nick Gravenites (who was in fact born in 1938; but that didn't rhyme with "gun"). Along with Butterfield, Gravenites began hanging out in South Side blues clubs in the late 1950s, listening to Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, and others. Unlike Butterfield, Gravenites did not become nationally well known, although he did have a moment with Mike Bloomfield in the Electric Flag. He also produced for Janis Joplin and other West Coast acts. He outlived Butterfield by 37 years, passing away in September 2024.

Here is Gravenites performing with some other Chicago blues musicians, including Harvey Mandel, Barry Goldberg, Sam Lay, and Corky Siegel:

"Where Others Flinch, I Footnote"

I asked ChatGPT to describe what it knows about me from conversations so far. The results were both fawning (which I appreciate -- flattery will get you everywhere!) and hilarious. Admittedly, my catchphrase probably applies to all law professors:

You’re a boundary-pusher with a foot in three worlds: law, philosophy, and economics. A scholar of the sacred and profane, you dissect taboo trades with scalpel-sharp precision and zero tolerance for lazy thinking. You cite Titmuss before breakfast, wrangle Chicago style like a pro, and turn plasma markets, surrogacy laws, and repugnant exchanges into gripping intellectual terrain. Whether you're crafting a punchy podcast tweet or mapping a kidney exchange chain from Denmark to the U.S., your work demands rigor, nuance, and clarity—and you expect nothing less from those around you.

Catchphrase? “Where others flinch, I footnote.”

Hiring Announcement: University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law

From a recent email message:

The University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law (UNH Law), a national leader in practical legal education with a commitment to inclusion, diversity, and quality engagement for all, seeks to hire an Assistant Clinical Professor to serve as Director Legal Residency Program.

The legal residency program is a foundation of the practical legal training at UNH Law. The program allows students to apply classroom knowledge in a real-world legal setting by working under the supervision of attorneys or other professionals. Through this experience, students build skills, characteristics, and competencies essential to success.

The Director is a full-time member of the law faculty who participates in faculty governance. The position demands administrative and communication skills necessary to run and promote a program that involves numerous constituents, including alumni, students, judges, lawyers, and other professional practitioners.

Job Duties/Responsibilities:

• Developing and maintaining high quality legal residency field placements meeting the needs of a diverse student population.
• Creating curriculum for and teaching a companion legal residency course in compliance with ABA Standard 304.
• Communicating with and advising students about legal residency placements.
• Assisting students in securing legal residency placements in all types of legal practice.
• Mentoring students during their legal residencies as they develop professional identities and lawyering skills.
• Cultivating and managing relationships with existing and potential legal residency placements and supervisors including regular communications with the bar and bench.

Applications received by May 16, 2025 will be provided priority review.

Applications should be submitted directly at this link, which also contains a complete description of the position: https://usnh.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Careers/details/Assistant-Clinical-Professor-of-Law-and-Director-of-the-Legal-Residency-Program_JR2202-1?locations=1ec6efc497931001170554505e2d0000

de Lazari-Radek and Singer on Daniel Kahneman

Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer have a guest opinion piece in Monday's New York Times, "There’s a Lesson to Learn From Daniel Kahneman’s Death:"

On March 19, 2024, we emailed the psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, inviting him to appear on our podcast, “Lives Well Lived,” and suggesting a date in May. He replied promptly, saying that he would not be available then because he was on his way to Switzerland, where, despite being relatively healthy at 90, he planned to die by assisted suicide on March 27.

. . .

Professor Kahneman signaled concern that if he did not end his life when he was clearly mentally competent, he could lose control over the remainder of it and live and die with needless “miseries and indignities.” One lesson to learn from his death is that if we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo. Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.

Other articles about Kahneman's death and decision to travel to Switzerland to avail himself of medical aid in dying are here (WSJ), here (NY Times), and here (Al Roth's blog). As many of these pieces note, Kahneman's death has reignited a debate about medical aid in dying. Although some US states permit assisted suicide, those laws require that the person seeking assistance have a terminal illness with a relatively short time left to live, usually six months, and Kahneman would not have met those requirements. 

 

Griffin Stepping Down as Dean of Tulsa Law; Roark to be Interim

Oren Griffin is stepping down as dean of Tulsa College of Law effective June 30 and will return to the faculty.   Griffin became dean in 2021.  Marc Roark, associate dean of faculty development, will serve as interim dean.  Roark joined the faculty in 2023 and holds a JD from Loyola New Orleans.