The Deafening Sound of Silence from AALS Administrators

UPDATE BELOW, as of 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 15.

It's less than a month away from the AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and as far as I know, section chairs haven't been told where their programs will be meeting.  There are law professors who do not wish to attend programs at the Hilton, and so the AALS should communicate this information.  

Professors at schools with limited travel budgets might be particularly harmed by the AALS's silence about the location of various parts of the program.  Imagine the professor who uses the majority of her or his travel budget to pay the conference registration fee and go to San Francisco, only to discover that all of the panels that he or she wanted to attend are being held at the Hilton?  If this professor is not willing to enter the Hilton because of the employment dispute, the professor has just "wasted" a big part of the travel budget. 

I also understand that all acceptances of "Hot Topics" panel proposals were contingent on the proposers' and participants' willingness to hold the "Hot Topic" panel at the Hilton.  This is manipulative at best and organizational bullying at worst.  Consider an untenured person whose "hot topic" proposal was accepted.  That professor faces a difficult choice if his or her school highly values an AALS appearance, but senior colleagues at the school are stridently urging others not to attend programs at the Hilton.

If the purpose of the AALS is "the improvement of the legal profession through legal education," how is legal education improved by the AALS administrators' approach?  

UPDATE AS OF 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:

Susan Westerberg Prager, AALS Executive Director and CEO, and Jane LaBarbera, AALS Managing Director, have notified section leaders by e-mail that the AALS will announce program locations tomorrow, December 16.  Professor Prager and Ms. Barbera write that that the AALS staff "could not relocate all Section programs."

Comments

[Doug Richmond]

Spare me. My suspicion is that AALS must book hotel space at least five years in advance and perhaps longer. The AALS leadership cannot predict labor strife at union hotels years out. There is only so much meeting space to go around and leveraging use of meeting space at the Hilton is simply prudent management. If your complaint is that you might have to cross a picket line, simply don't go. If you truly are in solidarity with the aggrieved union workers, you ought not go at all in protest of the AALS's decision to affiliate with the Hilton in any fashion. If you are simply worried about whether you might not be able to go to a given panel, then you are thinking only of yourself and, in fact, care nothing about the issues animating the labor strife or the affected employees. Is there anything about which law professors cannot or do not whine and snivel? The AALS annual meeting seems to be a perpetual source of bleating.

[Jimmy]

Sounds like the deafening silence from hiring committees.

[Lev]

My understanding is that AALS negotiated the space at the Hilton NINE years ago. ITs scrambling to move panels to other venues to accomodate complaints seems more than adequate a response.

[David S. Cohen]

I'm with you Bridget. As a junior faculty member who had his work chosen to be on a panel of junior new voices in a field, I'm torn about what to do if they don't move my panel. I know others on the panel are as well, and a related panel has already lost its moderator and other participants because of the delay.

[Anon]

Complaints about the Hilton being this year's are absurd. There is not strike, there is no picket line, and those profs who are complaining are not educating others about the issues dividing labor and management. The argument is framed as management against labor, and that lacks any substance. Arguments opposing the location of this year's meeting much to do about literally nothing: the workers haven't gone out on strike or voted to do so. All they've done is threatened to go on strike.

[Bridget Crawford]

Perhaps my initial post was not clear. My critique goes to the lack of communication from AALS administrators about where programs will be located. I did not intend to convey any impression, opinion or information about when the AALS booked the hotel space, whether any particular person will or will not cross a picket line that may or may not exist, or whether there is or is not space elsewhere.

[anon]

The Hilton is indeed subject to a boycott. http://www.onedaylongersf.org/
The AALS website lists December 20 as the deadline for refunds.

[Bill Reynolds]

The post suggests that senior professors might be "stridently urging" jumior faculty not to cross picket lines. I hope that is not true because someone in a position of authority over another should never try and influence such choices. It would be particularly deplorable if someone at a law school dedicated to liberal values were to do the urging.