This is the second guest post by Steve Epstein, about his book Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story of Acclaimed Law Professor Dan Markel’s Murder.
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 5, Daniel Eric Markel:
The next step of the process is the one that years later continues to send shivers down the spines of even those applicants who succeed—but especially those who fail. The Meat Market, which few call by its official name—the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference—is a two-day event at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C. that typically falls on either side of November 1. It is there that appointments committee representatives gather in hotel suites to meet with the slate of candidates they’ve decided to interview.
Dozens of interviews occur simultaneously throughout the sprawling, 1,152-room, two-building hotel complex, every thirty minutes like clockwork. Candidates literally crawl over one another in the lobby, elevators, and as they race through corridors to make their next interview—a hazing ritual nearly as brutal as those perpetrated by college fraternities. For those lucky enough to land 15 or more interviews, getting from one room to the next on time is challenging enough—remembering which school is which, and the names of the committee members, all the more daunting. The process is a diabolical mixture of chaos, terror, and endurance. Enough to fill to capacity both the hotel bar and nearby watering holes by dinner time.
By September 2003, Dan’s phone at Kellogg Huber was ringing off the hook with law schools eager to schedule interviews—attracted by his stellar resume and scholarly potential. He had more than two dozen lined up—including with Florida State—more than just about any other candidate in attendance. Which made the odds of him not landing a quality teaching position very low. His only remorse heading into the meeting—conveniently taking place a short Metro ride from his apartment—was that his alma mater Harvard had passed on putting him on its schedule.
When the first day of the conference arrived, Dan’s confidence level was off the charts, especially compared to the candidates against whom he was competing. Which is precisely why he struck out—failing to land a single offer. He’d entered each hotel suite trying to show off his scholarly acumen—coming across as arrogant and intimidating—not the type of colleague the professors interviewing him could envision in a nearby faculty office. His abysmal failure was a crushing blow, as Dan had arrived at the hotel certain he’d have a flurry of offers from which to choose—the thought of being completely shut out not even remotely on his radar.
As he retreated into a depressive funk, he couldn’t escape the painful reality that the same faculty members who were so enamored of Dan Markel on paper were far less attracted to him as he sat in their midst—a harsh rejection of his personality. But he was undeterred, vowing to try again the following year. Hopefully having learned from his mistakes.
For those who knew the late Dan Markel as a prodigious criminal punishment theory scholar, co-founder of PrawfsBlawg, founder of Prawfsfest!, and mentor to hundreds of young, ambitious law professors, his abject failure at the 2003 Meat Market may come as a significant surprise. After all, he entered that year’s recruitment conference as a double Harvard grad with a Master’s from Cambridge, had clerked at the Ninth Circuit, was an associate at a boutique D.C. firm, and had already published three significant articles, one with the Vanderbilt Law Review. Yet despite those impeccable credentials, even Florida State—where he landed as an assistant professor the following year—didn’t grant him an on-campus callback interview.
EXTREME PUNISHMENT tells the story of Dan Markel’s life and academic career, warts and all. Just as the path to success for many well-known actors and athletes is paved with one epic failure after another, Dan’s journey to becoming an internationally renowned criminal law scholar had several unsatisfying detours. Yet he stared down and rose from adversity time and time again, not only in his career, but in his personal life as well. His fierce determination and tenacity—coupled with his undeniable brilliance—propelled him to becoming a rock star on FSU’s faculty, in criminal law theory, and throughout the legal academy.
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