The Faculty Lounge

Michael Collins (1930-2021)

Apollo 11 astronaut dies at 90.

LeVonda Reed Named Dean of Georgia State Law

Georgia State University has announced that its new dean will be LaVonda Reed, a faculty member at Syracuse Law and the university's associate provost for faculty affairs.  Reed, who holds a JD from the University of Southern California, takes over in July.

"The Death Threat Myth Exposed" [Guest Post by Jennie Spotila on Dispelling a Damaging Rumor about ME/CFS]

Fact checking is always important, but perhaps never more so than when tracking down the origin of harmful rumors. Readers of this blog know that I have dispelled an urban legend about police cordons at Philadelphia hospitals, and another phony story about “Zionist” interference in hiring at Fresno State University. One of the most damaging rumors in medicine has been the oft-repeated story that ME/CFS patients have engaged in relentless harassment of psychiatry researchers. This bogus narrative has been mindlessly recounted in the press and offered as a justification for pursuing the so-called biopsychosocial theory of ME/CFS research. Fortunately, Jennie Spotila has gotten to the bottom of the story, discovering that the myth of dangerous ME/CFS patients can be traced back to a single anonymous telephone call, the significance of which has been blown all out of proportion in the constant retelling.

Jennie blogs at Occupy M.E. Her investigative work is guest-posted below with her permission. It is an outstanding example of the value of fact checking, especially on behalf of a marginalized community, and it even features (at the end) an apology and retraction from one of the myth’s super spreaders.

It takes a lot of digging to uncover how a rumor began. Jennie's post will be instructive to lawyers everywhere, whether or not they care about ME/CFS.

The Death Threat Myth Exposed 

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Jennie Spotila

Update April 7, 2021: Further comment from Dr. Vicky Whittemore added to the end of this post.

Last week, an old story was recounted to a new audience. During the March 30, 2021 NIH telebriefing with the ME/CFS community, Dr. Vicky Whittemore said that there had been death threats against grant reviewers in the past, and that this was one reason why NIH is now withholding the names of reviewers on the ME/CFS Special Emphasis Panel (referred to as the “SEP”). This is not the first time that NIH has used the story of death threats to justify withholding the grant review rosters from the public. This excuse is overblown, and every repetition of it harms the ME/CFS community by perpetuating derogatory stereotypes of advocates and people with the disease.

I can say that the death threat story is exaggerated because I have documentation of what actually happened. I began investigating who serves on the ME/CFS SEP in 2012. Grant review panels are federal advisory committees, and the law requires that the membership of the committees be disclosed to the public. Despite this requirement, Don Luckett at the Center for Scientific Review told me in 2012 that they no longer posted the rosters online “due to threats some previous panel reviewers have received.” At his suggestion, I filed a FOIA request for the rosters, and I also requested evidence of the threats. NIH initially refused to release the information, but I appealed and in 2014 I won. NIH released the rosters to me, along with the evidence of the threats cited by Mr. Luckett.

Ben Carson's New Gig

I have an essay today on Tropics of Meta about Ben Carson's new venture as head of a non-profit with a very unfortunate name:

TROPICS OF META

HISTORIOGRAPHY FOR THE MASSES

April 26, 2021

Steven Lubet

Ben Carson’s Unfortunate Cornerstone

Dr. Ben Carson has a new gig as the head of something called the American Cornerstone Institute. It seems that the outfit exists primarily as a funding vehicle for the good doctor himself, but that should hardly raise an eyebrow in today’s Washington, D.C.  The greater problem is that the operation’s poorly chosen name echoes an historically freighted pro-slavery declaration, issued on the eve of the Civil War.

The former presidential candidate, ex-secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and retired neurosurgeon’s not-for-profit think tank promises to “champion conservative solutions to the real problems our nation faces.” After four years of quiescence during the Trump administration, Carson now claims to have realized that values such as “compromise, compassion, and civility” have vanished from our political discourse, and he is determined to restore them.

The Cornerstone Institute is basically a one-man show. The website flogs Carson’s accomplishments, with multiple still photographs, video clips and pull-quotes touting his wisdom, insight, and principles, with no mention of anyone else. And of course, there are pitches for contributions. The Cornerstone Institute was only incorporated in February 2021, so it is too soon to obtain the IRS form with information on its top salaries, but it is a pretty safe bet that Carson is paying himself handsomely for what is essentially just a big exercise in self-promotion.

I don’t have any complaints about ex-Trump officials cashing in however they can. Carson wasn’t close enough to the president to write a tell-all book, he doesn’t seem to have the energetic people skills needed for lobbying, and he isn’t a lawyer. So that leaves think-tanking, with Carson evidently betting that he can do better on his own than he can working for one of the established right-wing outfits.

The actually disturbing thing about Carson’s endeavor is its name. “Cornerstone” seems obviously intended as a New Testament reference – although that is unmentioned on the website – but the word also has a much more poisonous association in American political history. It is odd that nobody appears to have warned Carson about it before he went public.

On March 21, 1861, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the recently formed Confederate States of American, delivered what has come to be known as the Cornerstone Address, explaining the reasons for secession from the Union. He minced no words, defending slavery as the guiding principle of the Confederacy:

Our new government is founded . . . its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. . . . This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Lolita Buckner Inniss Named Dean at Colorado Law School

Lolita Buckner Inniss (currently Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University Distinguished Professor, Robert G. Storey Distinguished Faculty Fellow, and Professor of Law at SMU) has been named dean of the University of Colorado Law School, effective July 1, 2021. She will become Colorado Law’s first African-American dean and second woman to lead the school.

The university's announcement is here. Congratulations, Dean Inniss!

Feelin' Alright

"Feelin' Alright" was written in 1968 by Dave Mason of Traffic for the band's first album, also named Traffic. Released that year as a single, "Feelin' Alright" did not chart, although it was a popular cut on album rock stations. It became better known in 1969 when Joe Cocker released it and included it on his debut album A Little Help from My Friends. Cocker re-titled the song  "Feeling Alright," which was pretty odd, given his famously poor enunciation. It has since been covered many times.

Keith Faulkner Named Dean of Appalachian Law

The Appalachian School of Law has selected B. Keith Faulkner as its next dean.  Faulkner, who will take over this summer,  has been serving as dean of Liberty University Law since 2015.  He holds a JD from Campbell Law School and an LLM from Baylor.

What Should Go in the Conclusion to a Law Review Article?

Ellen Muehleberger (@emuehleb), Professor of History and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, posted to Twitter a list of advice for her students about what should go in the conclusion of a scholarly paper in History. Many of her tips seem equally helpful for law review articles, too. Here are a few of Professor Meuhlberger's suggestions:

• take a piece of evidence used early in the paper and revisit it, re-reading it under the new analysis that developed over the course of the paper
• zoom out, taking the reader to a concept or method you haven't talked about yet, but that now needs to be thought of differently because of what you've written, and explain that
• zoom in, looking just at the small field/era/geography you've covered, and make clear where your argument sits among the work of three other people writing on that small field/era/geography
• make a list of the things you weren't able to do in the paper, then turn that list into a set of explorations you suggest are now possible for the reader to take up

The full thread is unrolled here.

National Independent Bookstore Day

Saturday, April 24, is National Independent Bookstore Day. Every independent bookstore is unique -- which is sort of the point -- so there is no unified program. Here is the announcement from Evanston's Bookends & Beginnings:

Join our “Friends Don’t Let Friends Buy Books from Amazon” campaign If you’re cheering us on in the Amazon lawsuit, we want you to help us make this a movement! On Independent Bookstore Day, the first 10 people to purchase a copy of the book How to Resist Amazon and Why will get a second copy free to give away to someone else. These 10 copies were donated by Downtown Evanston, which supports all the merchants in your downtown area and wants to encourage everyone to shop locally. And anyone who buys two copies of this neat little $12.95 manifesto will get $2 off the purchase. So then you can still have an extra to give away, to help spread the word about those less-visible consequences of Amazon shopping involving labor practices, data privacy, local economies, and the damage done to the book publishing industry. These offers are only good in-store--not for online orders!

Shop our unique Independent Bookstore Day 2021 merchandise. These are items produced uniquely for the IBD celebration, and include: Signed copies of Jeff VanderMeer’s new novel Hummingbird Salamander; copies of In the Tall Grass, a short story by Stephen King and Joe Hill never before published in book form; special edition Blackwing pencils created just for IBD; and this year’s limited edition IBD tote bags.

Reflections on George Floyd's Murder Convictions....

 

Here are some gut reactions to perhaps ponder and/or annoy: 

Jury came to the correct conclusion.

Felt little joy thinking of the senseless loss of George Floyd's life. 

Felt shame someone died over an alleged counterfeit $20.00 bill.

Understood the relief so many African-American and other POC felt yesterday.

Shocked by the empathy I felt for the defendant when his eyes turned red, perhaps tears, when the verdicts were red.

Entire episode reminded me how much more love we need in this world. 

Hiring Announcement: University of Missouri School of Law (Clinical Director / Veterans Clinic)

From an email message that I received recently:

The University of Missouri School of Law invites applications for a Clinical Director to perform teaching duties and legal services as well as fundraising, fiscal, and student-focused duties within our Veterans Clinic.

The Veterans Clinic began in 2014 and serves hundreds of veterans each year, helping veterans and their families secure disability benefits. Students are supervised by experienced attorneys, providing them an opportunity to work in a law firm atmosphere within the law school serving real client needs. The clinic is also involved in engagement activities throughout the state of Missouri and in conjunction with MU Extension through the Tigers for Troops outreach program for rural veterans. For more information about our Veterans Clinic, please visit https://law.missouri.edu/veterans-clinic/.

This position will be a 12-month non tenure track position and will be filled with a title of  Assistant,  Associate, or Full Clinical Professor depending on the candidate’s experience and qualifications. For questions, please contact Associate Dean Paul Litton at 573-882-6488.

Duties include but are not limited to:

• Teaching Veterans Clinic class and supervising students on case files
• Managing clinic case load year round
• Teaching other law school classes as needed
• Helping secure sustainable funding for the Clinic
• Participating in veterans advocacy projects on a national level

Wendy Hensel Named Iowa President Finalist

The University of Iowa presidential search continues to focus on law profs.  This week Iowa hosted its third finalist - Provost Wendy Hensel of Georgia State, the former dean of Georgia State Law.  As I previously noted, Penn State Dean Hari Osofsky was the first candidate to visit Iowa City. 

Further Fallout from Faux Facts

Following my recent article and post on vivid details in storytelling – explaining their usefulness to emphasize both true and faux facts – I received a very critical email from an old friend, who happens to be a social scientist. The email raised arguments that I have frequently heard from sociologists, so they seemed worth addressing here.  I have copied the message below, with my responses interspersed. The sender will remain unidentified.

Steve, just one more small attempt to convey to you the ways your work seems itself cherry-picked and unwilling to admit of contrary evidence:  trials are rife with false facts, and attorneys lie to courts and juries all the time.

Having devoted much professional time and effort to reversing wrongful convictions, I have not once ever – in the recent article or in Interrogating Ethnography, or anywhere else – said that trials are perfect means of fact-finding or that lawyers and witnesses are always truthful. I haven’t even held trials out as an actual model for ethnography other than by metaphor, and the metaphor itself was first suggested by esteemed ethnographer Mitchell Duneier. Nonetheless, I encounter this misinterpretation fairly often, claiming that I want ethnographers to act like lawyers. As one considerably more perceptive sociologist has pointed out, that is a "superficial caricature" of my writing. An accurate description would be that ethnographers can learn something about fact-checking and facticity from other professionals such as lawyers, journalists, and historians.

 I recently had a chance to see that first-hand in a trial.  You are taking a few examples from (to-be-sure actual) ethnographies and counterposing them to an utterly idealized picture of law as it actually functions in action. 

Once again, I have not presented anything close to an idealized picture of law. I have written only that legal systems have developed means of fact testing that could be useful by analogy in ethnography, if ethnographers were willing to learn from other disciplines and rigorously fact-check one another. 

What Should Museums Do With The Bones Of The Enslaved?

The New York Times.  Or this one, "Penn Museum owes reparations for previously holding remains of a MOVE bombing victim."

 

(University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology.)

 

Drake Law Seeks Legal Writing Visitor

This just in:

Drake University Law School invites applications for a temporary appointment as Visiting Assistant/Associate/Professor of Law, to teach Legal Writing II in Spring Semester 2022. Currently, the Law School plans for these classes to be offered in-person rather than remotely, subject to health and safety considerations, and candidates should be willing to teach in-person and qualified to teach in either format. Drake is an equal opportunity employer dedicated to workforce diversity. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who would enrich the diversity of our academic community to apply. For more information on the law school and its programs, see www.drake.edu/law. Interested candidates should submit a letter of interest, CV, and a list of at least three references via email to Associate Dean Andrew W. Jurs, andrew.jurs@drake.edu. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with a priority deadline of May 7, 2021.

Can McMaster University Medical School Psychiatrists Be Trusted to Treat ME/CFS Patients?

[Cross-posted on the Virology Blog]

There were many problems with Dr. Jeremy Devine’s disturbing oped in the Wall Street Journal, as I have detailed here. In addition to gaslighting Long Covid patients and disparaging patient advocacy groups, Devine asserted that the PACE trial’s psychogenic theory of ME/CFS is “the prevailing view among medical practitioners.” As readers of this site know, that has not been true since at least 2015, when the U.S. Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) reported its finding that ME/CFS is a “serious, chronic, complex, systemic disease”— not a psychiatric or psychological disorder.

Devine is a 2017 University of Toronto medical school graduate and currently a psychiatry resident at the McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences in Hamilton, Ontario. As a doctor-in-training, he obviously must have obtained at least some of his misinformation from his supervising senior physicians. This raises the troubling likelihood that McMaster psychiatry residents are still being taught that ME/CFS is, as Devine put it, “an underlying mental-health issue,” presumably treatable with cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy per the PACE trial (which Devine linked in his oped).

Because prospective ME/CFS patients have a right to know about the quality of care they can expect from McMaster physicians, I sent an inquiry to Drs. Nick Kates and Karen Saperson, respectively the chair and vice chair of McMaster’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neuroscience, recognizing of course that Devine is entitled to his own opinions about Long Covid:

Dr. Devine also wrote that the “prevailing view among medical practitioners” is that ME/CFS is a symptom of “an underlying mental-health issue,” linking to the UK’s 2011 PACE trial. That was more than a statement of his opinion, and it seriously misrepresented the actual state of current medical practice.

The US Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) issued a report in 2015 finding that ME/CFS is a “serious, chronic, complex, systemic disease”— not a psychiatric or psychological disorder. The PACE trial’s recommended treatments of Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) have since been discontinued by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control. Likewise, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) issued a revised draft of its clinical guidelines, dropping both CBT and GET as treatments for ME/CFS, and strongly advising against the latter. Promising biomedical research on ME/CFS is now underway at major U.S. Universities, including Stanford, Columbia, and Cornell.

It is simply untrue to maintain that the “prevailing view among medical practitioners” is that ME/CFS is mental-health disorder.

Consequently, I am writing to ask whether Dr. Devine’s understanding of the “prevailing view” is taught in the McMaster psychiatry program. Does your department continue to follow the recommendations of the PACE trial (which the NICE draft called a “low quality” study)? Are your patients advised to engage in Graded Exercise Therapy? Are your residents made aware of post-2015 developments in the U.S.?

It appears to me that Dr. Devine’s outdated views of ME/CFS may reflect poorly on the quality of training and care provided by your program. Kindly let me know if I am mistaken.

Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band

Pittsburgh Tax Review CFP: "Teaching Tax Law" (abstracts due 5/15)

Pittsburgh Tax Review

Call for Papers:

Teaching Tax Law

Spring 2022 Special Issue

In the second issue of its 19th volume, the Pittsburgh Tax Review will publish a series of contributions addressing the teaching of tax law. The aim of this special issue is to collect in one place the insights of leading tax teachers as a service for all those who are interested in and devoted to educating current law students and future tax lawyers. The Pittsburgh Tax Review has already secured the participation of five distinguished scholar/teachers: Alice Abreu (Temple University Beasley School of Law), Samuel Donaldson (Georgia State University College of Law), Heather Field (UC Hastings College of Law), Deborah Geier (Cleveland State University Cleveland-Marshall College of Law), and Katherine Pratt (Loyola Law School, Los Angeles).

The Pittsburgh Tax Review invites proposals from others for one to two additional contributions to be included in this special issue. Proposals for a contribution of between 8,000 and 10,000 words are welcome from all who teach tax law. Potential contributions to the special issue might take a variety of forms. For example, contributions to the special issue might describe classroom techniques and innovations, innovations in course design or structure, or novel courses. Or contributions might explore the lessons learned during the time we have all now spent teaching during the pandemic and consider how that might impact our teaching once we all return to the classroom. Or contributions might be completely forward looking and propose novel ideas or experiments in teaching that have not yet been implemented. Or contributions might approach the topic of teaching tax law from an entirely different perspective.

Interested individuals should send an abstract outlining the topic and substance of their proposed contribution to the Pittsburgh Tax Review by email at taxrev@pitt.edu. Abstracts should be no longer than 250 words and should be submitted by May 15, 2021. Proposals will be reviewed and invitations will be issued by June 15, 2021. Those invited to participate will be required to submit tentative drafts by October 15, 2021 (to be shared among all of the contributors to the special issue) and final drafts ready for editing by the Pittsburgh Tax Review’s staff of student editors by December 31, 2021.

Hari Osofsky Named Finalist in Iowa President Search

The University of Iowa has named Dean Hari Osofsky, of Penn State Law - University Park, as one of four finalists in its search for a new president.   A report on her presentation is here.  Iowa President Bruce Herreld announced his retirement last fall.  Osofsky joined Penn State as dean in 2017.

Darby Dickerson Named New Dean of Southwestern Law

Southwestern Law School has announced that its new dean will be Dean Darby Dickerson of UIC - John Marshall Law School.  Dickerson, who holds a JD from Vanderbilt, is the Immediate Past President of the AALS.  Dickerson takes over from Dean Susan Prager on July 1.