The Faculty Lounge

Bass Lines [UPDATED] [UPDATED]

Here are some songs with iconic bass lines (played on either bass or guitar bass strings). You can tell they are iconic because even cover versions, which artists often attempt to make distinctive, still rely on the same lines. [Don't miss the update on great session bassists at the bottom of this post.)

Socio-Legal Approaches to Property CRN Call for Papers

For the sixth year, the Socio-Legal Approaches to Property CRN will be hosting a series of panels at the Annual Law and Society Association Meeting. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic this year’s conference will be hybrid. Therefore please indicate if you are planning on attending in person or wish to attend virtually. For more information on the LSA format please visit: https://www.lawandsociety.org/faqs-lisbon-2022/

Panels to be held at the Law and Society Global Meeting

Lisbon, Portugal from July 13-16 2022

Abstract Deadline to SLAP – November 1^st, 2021

Submissions

We invite original, unpublished submissions from scholars at any stage of their careers. We are interested in empirically-based papers examining any issues related to the treatment of land and other tangible things as property. Topics may include but are not limited to: land tenure; indigenous forms of property; collectives and property pluralism; land use; symbols of property; resource extraction; civil forfeiture, inheritance; embodied property; redistribution of property; social movements; and resistance to property. We will consider all empirically-grounded papers that focus on tangible property, anywhere in the world. All kinds of empirical methods are welcome.

If you have a book you would like discussed in a panel session, then please get in touch as we have hosted several “authors meet readers” session.

To submit your paper for consideration please email John Felipe Acevedo, jacevedo@law.ua.edu the following information:

• A 100-250 word abstract describing the topic, methodology, and findings (or expected findings) of your paper.
• The paper title.
• Your contact information including affiliation, discipline(s), and email
• If you have already submitted your paper to LSA please provide your submission number.

Panel on Structural Racialization of Property

In addition, to the general call Jamila Jefferson-Jones and Taja-Nia Henderson are seeking papers as part of a panel on structural protections of property (racialized as white) are detrimental to the flourishing of persons of color and their actual lives. If you have a project that you believes fits this panel please submit it to Jamila Jefferson-Jones (jeffersonjones@wayne.edu) and Taja-Nia Henderson (tajhenderson@gmail.com) by the above deadline.

Questions

Contact John Felipe Acevedo jacevedo@law.ua.edu.

Thompson v. Clark & the "indications of innocence" standard under Section 1983

I wanted to share this excellent op ed piece by BU Professor Jasmine Gonzales Rose about the unfair "indications of innocence" standard used by some Circuits in Sec. 1983 actions and the pending Supreme Court case, Thompson v. Clark, which could change it. https://lnkd.in/dCRg9S-D #policeaccountability #criminaljusticereform #section1983

Patricia Bennett Stepping Down as Dean of Mississippi College Law

Dean Patricia Bennett, who has served as the dean of Mississippi College School of Law since 2016, will step down on June 30, 2022. Dean Bennett served as President of the Mississippi Bar in 2018 while the full time dean at MC Law. The school will begin a national dean search.

Trevor Morrison Stepping Down as Dean of NYU Law

Trevor Morrison, who has served as dean of NYU Law since 2013, will step down at the end of the 2021-2022 academic year.  Details regarding the dean search will be forthcoming from the University. 

Chapman University Names Matt Parlow Named Executive VP & Advancement Chief

Chapman Law Dean Matt Parlow has been named Chapman University's new Executive Vice President and Chief Advancement Officer.  He has served as dean of the law school since 2016.  Parlow takes over December 1.  An interim dean will be named shortly. 

Seattle Law Seeks Dean

Seattle Law is seeking a new dean.  A full position specification gives all the details.  

 

Should Academic Departments Take Official Positions on Controversial Political Issues? (Part Two)

Yesterday's guest post by Cary Nelson, emeritus professor at the University of Illinois and former president of the AAUP, included a group letter (written by Prof. Richard Ross) to the UIUC chancellor and provost, setting out the reasons that academic departments should not take formal positions on controversial political issues, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict. As Professors Ross, Nelson and colleagues put it, "The distinction between individual and departmental speech is critical."

Prof. Nelson reports, "A month later we received a response from the Chancellor’s office, one I and others regard as immensely troubling," including this passage:

[I]nstructing departments not to advocate on political issues unrelated to their academic or research missions could chill the campus conversation and cause some of your own colleagues to challenge such instruction as an unacceptable intrusion on shared governance.

In other words, as I understand it, the chancellor and provost are wary of taking steps to avoid intimidating students and faculty, because that would chill the expression of the intimidators.

The UIUC administration's full response is after the jump.

Should Academic Departments Take Official Positions on Controversial Political Issues? [Part One] [UPDATED]

It ought to be well-recognized that individual faculty members must be free to state controversial political views, and the same is true for groups or organizations of academics (so long as the statements do not imply “unfitness” to teach in the relevant discipline). But what about political declarations by entire academic departments? As I have explained, an avowed participant in anti-Israel academic boycotts should not be able to serve as a dean, because such a boycott itself can violate the academic freedom of other faculty and students. Does the same hold true when a department states an official position on a controversial political issue, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict?

This guest post by Cary Nelson, emeritus professor at the University of Illinois and former president of the AAUP, sets out the reasons why academic departments should not take official political positions, as he and over forty colleagues explained in a letter to the chancellor and provost of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The letter itself was written by Professor Richard Ross of the UIUC law school.

Prof. Nelson is working on a detailed account to rebut the "fiction of departmental academic freedom" and to draft a model university policy. Here is the gist of the group letter to the UIUC administration:

The distinction between individual and departmental speech is critical. 

First, an academic unit that engages in political advocacy chills robust debate and potentially intimidates scholars who think differently.  Can a student expect open inquiry in an environment of mutual respect if his or her department publicly commits to one side in the complicated Israeli-Palestinian dispute?  Can a department that calls for the boycott and sanction of Israel (in violation of University policy) study Israeli perspectives as well as Palestinian ones?  If a unit denounces Israel in inflammatory prose and promises “solidarity with Palestine,” only a brave untenured faculty member would dare voice a contrary position.  Graduate students whose careers can be hurt by the withdrawal of mentorship, adjunct faculty on one-year contracts, undergraduates concerned about grades and recommendations, and academic professionals with the minimal protections of “at will” employees would need to summon even greater bravery to dissent. 

The entire letter is after the jump. Tomorrow, I will post the UIUC administration’s rather troubling reply.

[Note: this post has been updated by adding Prof. Richard Ross as the drafter of the letter to the administration.]