The Faculty Lounge

Girl from the North Country

[I originally had this queued up for mid-June, but we just saw A Complete Unknown, which I recommend, so I decided to rearrange the schedule.]

"Girl from the North Country" is on Bob Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, released in 1963. Unlike his eponymous debut album, Freewheelin' featured mostly original tracks, including "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." It was the album that really brought him to national attention -- Bob Dylan had sold relatively poorly -- charting at number 22.

There is evidently some ongoing debate about the identity of the north country girl. Some say it was one of his Minnesota sweethearts, others that it was Suze Rotolo, who is holding his arm on the album cover. (I wouldn't call New York the north country, but she is wearing a "coat so warm.") I'm guessing it was no one in particular, given that the introductory line -- "Remember me to one who lives there/for she was once a true love of mine" -- was lifted from the traditional English ballad "Scarborough Fair" (no, Paul Simon didn't write it).

Either way, it became one of Dylan's memorable collaborations with Johnny Cash. 

I've always been drawn to this song about the north country because of my ancestral ties to Winnipeg, which is about 325 miles northwest of Hibbing (and 450 miles from the Twin Cities).

This is the earliest live clip I could find:

Discovery of Alien Imminent?

I don't think so.

Swarthmore Conference, 1933

W.E.B. DuBois and Professor Ulrich B. Phillips once met? That is astonishing to me. You will recall Ulrich Phillips wrote several volumes on slavery, which were favorable to slave-owning individuals, to say the least.

Here is The Crisis, September 1933: Swarthmore Conference An Institute on Race Relations held at Swarthmore College under the auspices of the Committee of Race Relations of the Society of Friends, brought together during July, leaders and the foremost thinkers of both races in America. The conference which met to consider the social factors involved in the Negro-white relations in the United States, was attended by Dr. Will W. Alexander of Atlanta, president of Dillard University; Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, editor of the Crisis; Professor Ulrich B. Phillips of Yale University; Professor Melville Herskovits of Northwestern University; Donald Young of the Social Science Research Council, James Weldon Johnson, Broadus Mitchel, and Mabel Carney.

Call for Papers: UCLA School of Law (Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy)

From a recent email message:

The Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law is pleased to announce its first annual Business and Tax Roundtable for Upcoming Professors (“BATRUP”). This in-person Roundtable will take place at UCLA from Friday evening June 13th through Sunday June 15th. The program will feature commentary by invited senior scholars as well as an opportunity to meet fellow aspiring scholars while enjoying Los Angeles. We warmly invite scholars preparing for the academic job market to participate.

Roundtable Purpose and Eligibility

The Roundtable is designed to offer mentorship and feedback to aspiring legal scholars who plan to pursue tenure-track positions at law schools. It is open to scholars who hold a JD, master’s degree, or PhD, who have not yet secured a tenure-track law faculty appointment, and who are not yet listed in this academic year’s Faculty Appointments Register. Selected authors must be able to attend the Roundtable in person at UCLA.

We welcome submissions on any topic within business law or tax law. Co-authored papers are eligible provided all authors meet the submission criteria. To ensure the Roundtable's focus on evolving scholarship, we ask that submitted papers not be published or scheduled for publication by the Roundtable date, though papers accepted for publication that remain open to substantive revisions are eligible.

Selection Process and Roundtable Details

We anticipate selecting 7–9 papers from the submissions received. For each selected paper, the Lowell Milken Institute will cover reasonable travel, accommodation, and meal expenses for one author to attend the Roundtable. Participants will have the chance to engage in dynamic exchanges with UCLA faculty and invited guest scholars, as well as with their peers. Our aim is to foster a supportive community of early-career business and tax law scholars as they prepare for their careers in legal academia.

Submission Guidelines

Interested participants should submit either a complete draft or an extended summary of at least 5,000 words by email to [email protected] by February 14, 2025. We expect to notify authors of their selection by March 31, 2025. For any questions, please reach out to the same email address or to one of our faculty co-directors, Professors Jason Oh or Andrew Verstein.

Please feel free to share this call for papers with anyone who may be interested in participating.

George L. Priest (1947-2024)

I am particularly sorry to hear about the passing of Professor George L. Priest. He was an emeritus professor at Yale Law School, and he was a professor at the University of Puget Sound, Buffalo, UCLA, and the University of Chicago. He was a graduate of Yale University and University of Chicago Law School. He shaped generations of law schools regarding antitrust and tort law, among many other fields. The festschrift was in September 2024. He will be missed. 

Folk music building trivia (Philadelphia area)

Today I am branching out on the subject of trivia questions.  It’s still related to a building, but this time the building is not a courthouse (or the house of a famous judge or lawyer). It’s a building where a coffee house hosted important concerts by folk (and rock) musicians back in the 1970s.  This is in what is to my mind a very posh suburb, though I do recall one of my friends from college mentioning that part of this town, where she went to college, was seedy. If someone said that to me now, I’d either start laughing or say something like, are you joking? But back then I just took it in and didn’t say anything. To get to the question, what coffee shop was in this building and why was it important?  I came across this when I was researching a folk artist I’m particularly interested in because he lived (and following his premature death was buried) near where I grew up.  I remember my seventh-grade English teacher who knew the man in passing, as I guess a lot of the “hippie element” around my hometown did, talking about his tragic death at a young age.  But while that man played in this coffee house, so did a great many others and some even better known. (It is in the Philadephia area.)