The Faculty Lounge

Frank Wu is President of Queens College

Normally these posting are in the future tense, but I have to plead guilty to missing this one completely!  Frank Wu, former chancellor and dean of Hastings Law, took up a new job this summer leading CUNY's Queens College.  That makes two CUNY presidents emerging from the ranks of law school deans.  Michelle Anderson, president of Brooklyn College, formerly helmed CUNY Law.  

Eduardo Peñalver Named President of Seattle University

Seattle University announced today that its new president will be Cornell University law dean Eduardo M. Peñalver. Peñalver has served  as Cornell's dean since 2014.  He will be Seattle University's first Latino president and the first layperson to lead the Jesuit school. Peñalver will take over on July 1, 2021.

Phoebe Haddon Stepping Down as Rutgers-Camden Chancellor

Phoebe Haddon, the chancellor of Rutgers-Camden (and former dean of Maryland Law), will be stepping down this summer after six years.  She was previously on the Temple Law faculty.  

Lisa Kloppenberg Named Santa Clara Provost

Lisa Kloppenberg, the interim provost of Santa Clara University, and former dean of both Santa Clara Law and Dayton Law, has been named permanent provost of Santa Clara.  She will take the position March 1.

Ken Port (1960-2019)

Professor Kenneth L. Port was Mitchell Hamline Law School.  He taught intellectual property. He was 58.  

David Yellen Resigns as Marist President

Former Loyola-Chicago and Hofstra law dean, David Yellen, resigned unexpectedly from his position as president of Marist College last year.  He had been in the role since 2016.  The interim president, Dennis Murray,  served as Marist's president  for 37 years before Yellen took the helm.  No doubt Murray was a very tough person to succeed - and presumably there are some people who are very happy to see things return to "normal."

Joseph Harroz Named Interim President of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma College of Law dean, Joseph Harroz Jr., has been named the interim president of the university.  He will serve for at least 15 months.  Harroz has been the dean of the law school since 2010.  An interim dean of the law school will be announced shortly. 

McConnell Named President of Colorado State

Colorado State University named its first woman president last week - Joyce McConnell.  McConnell, who is currently the provost at West Virginia University, served as dean of the WVU law school from 2008 to 2014.  She joined the WVU faculty in 1995 and holds a JD from Antioch (the artist currently known as UDC Law) and an LLM from Georgetown.  

USF Building Renamed Because of Anti-Asian Racism of its Namesake

In what may be a first, the University of San Francisco has renamed a residence hall because of the anti-Asian views of its namesake. Last week USF removed the name of James Phelan, a former mayor of San Francisco, U.S. Senator, and USF alumnus.  Phelan was among the leaders of the Japanese exclusion movement that swept California after 1905, and famously ran for reelection to the Senate in 1920 under the slogan, "Keep California White." That has not happened: the matriculating class this year at Phelan’s alma mater is 27.9% white. USF President Paul Fitzgerald, S.J. expressed no desire to scrub Phelan from USF’s history, and sees a continuing relevance in his story: “Phelan used xenophobia to gain political office . . . It’s important that our community recognizes that the temptation to run campaigns built on racism and fear of immigration, which was typical of Phelan’s era, continues to exist around the world today.”

What Could Stanford Have Been Thinking?

I find myself reluctantly gesturing toward one of the third rails of public discourse—sexual assault.  Substantively, of course, there is very little disagreement:  No one speaks out in favor of sexual assault.  (Jokes about whether the President is an exception can be made in another forum.)  But in the lawyer’s wheelhouse of procedure—especially procedure that influences outcome (which, let’s face it, is just a wordier name for procedure)—there are deeply held and pointedly variant views. 

One such issue came to a head recently.  Stanford University did something that, at least based on what I can glean from the mainstream media, seems incomprehensibly ill-considered.  I’m hoping there’s something the New York Times isn’t reporting that explains things more fully.  (Full disclosure:  I attended Stanford Law School in the early 1980s.  I loved my time there, and remain immeasurably grateful for the outstanding education I was privileged to enjoy.  So far as I know, the events related here don’t involve the Law School, its faculty, or its administration.  The University, however, ought to know better.)

A quick primer:  Because the formality and procedural complexity of the criminal justice system in this country is largely fixed, a certain amount of debate in recent years concerning how to address sexual violence has focused on an alternative remedial system in force in places where a substantial amount of sexual violence occurs—Title IX.  Title IX is part of the Education Amendments of 1972 to the Civil Rights Act, and prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” at any educational institution that receives federal funds.  20 U.S.C. § 1681.  Among other things, this means that Title IX applies to any college or university that receives any federal money for any purpose, and that’s most of them.  And though administrative enforcement of Title IX was for many years sparse at best, beginning in 2011 with what is widely known because of its charmingly informal salutation as the “Dear Colleague” Letter, the Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) in the Obama Department of Education took a series of strong positions that sexual harassment or sexual violence that affects a student’s education—including individualized student-on-student conduct—is discrimination on the basis of sex that violates Title IX.  The OCR further opined that any federally assisted educational institution has an obligation both to try to prevent such conduct and to remediate it if it happens, on pain of losing the federal funding that has become integral to most of their budgets.  (It remains to be seen how this policy will fare under Donald Trump’s and Betsy DeVos’s stewardship.)

The “Dear Colleague” Letter suggested a range of strategies to discourage, determine and remedy violations, but left the details up to the educational institutions.  Very few had devoted anything close to the levels of attention and resources the OCR seemed to expect, and it soon called out a substantial list of colleges and universities, including many elite ones, that it considered out of compliance.  What followed was a national scramble to develop policies and practices consistent with notice and enforcement standards that were in many important respects explicitly and deliberately vague.  (More disclosure:  While I was on the faculty at the University of North Carolina, I served on University committees charged with Title IX compliance and enforcement issues, and as a Title IX hearing officer in disputes concerning sexual harassment and assault.  I have real admiration for UNC’s efforts to meet regulatory standards, and heaven knows we took our duties seriously when we served as hearing officers.  But no, I can’t and won’t discuss any of that.)

Stanford has been one of the universities subject to OCR’s Title IX scrutiny, and there are differences of opinion over how effective its efforts to discourage and remedy sexual violence have been.  Stanford has chosen to put unresolved disputes over whether a student-on-student violation occurred to a three-person hearing panel, with a finding of a violation requiring the unanimous concurrence of all three panelists.  Convening a hearing panel to resolve disputed facts is not unusual, but requiring a unanimous finding of a violation is. To make the process more accessible to the students invoking the hearing process, Stanford also took the unusual step of providing them a choice from a list of knowledgeable local lawyers, apparently at the University’s expense for the first nine hours of service, and at a reduced rate of $200 per hour paid by the student after that.  (Students were also free to choose their own counsel at their own expense.)

Crystal Riggins was one of the “Stanford-sponsored Title IX attorneys” on Stanford’s referral list, and represented exclusively students seeking recognition and remedy of sexual wrongs.  By all reports, Ms. Riggins is an able and experienced lawyer who served the students who chose her with zeal and fidelity.  Stanford nevertheless recently removed her from its referral list because it found her lacking in loyalty—to Stanford. 

Those of you steeped in the lawyer’s duty of loyalty to her client should just have snapped to attention.  Surely you can’t mean what you just said, Bernie.  But at least according to the Times, that seems to be what happened.  Ms. Riggins considered some aspects of Stanford’s hearing process unfair to her clients, particularly its unusual requirement of panel unanimity to find a violation.  This is hardly a fringe position (not that it should have mattered if it were).  She criticized the policy publicly in the New York Times.  (See here and here.) 

Retribution was swift.  Lauren Schoenthaler, Stanford’s Senior Associate Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Access, promptly wrote Ms. Riggins that her comments were “disappointing” and indicated “a lack of faith in Stanford’s Title IX Process.”  “Given your stated lack of confidence,” Ms. Schoenthaler continued, “it does not make sense for the university to continue to refer our students to you.”  So much for Institutional Equity and Access, I guess.

Crystal Riggins’ response was precisely the one the Rules of Professional Conduct demanded of her:  “As a zealous advocate, my only duty is to the student-parties that I represent.”  Damn right.  See ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.4(c) (“A lawyer shall not permit a person who recommends, employs, or pays the lawyer to render legal services for another to direct or regulate the lawyer's professional judgment in rendering such legal services”).  The ethics rule in California (Cal. R. Prof. Cond. 3-310(F)) is differently worded, but to similar effect.

Let me start by making clear some things that are not wrong with Stanford’s actions.  This is not a First Amendment issue:  Stanford is a private university.  This is not an employment wrong:  Ms. Riggins is not Stanford’s employee.  This doesn’t really meet the requirements of any of the interference torts.  Is it a violation of Title IX?  That’s debatable, but given the change in administration it’s a debate that may never occur, at least not in any formally enforceable context.  I don’t know, of course, but I find myself forced to wonder whether Ms. Riggins would still be on Stanford’s referral list had the recent election come out the other way, so that no change in Education Department policy might have been expected.

The point here is not whether you agree or disagree with Crystal Riggins’ criticisms of Stanford’s Title IX dispute-resolution system.  The point is that Stanford made Ms. Riggins’ services more expensive and less accessible to the students participating in that dispute-resolution system precisely because she criticized the system’s procedural rules, and advocated what she viewed as improvements.  She was punished for doing her job.  Imagine the outcry if a governor had fired a public defender for publicly advocating what she considered fairer rules of criminal procedure than the ones that state had in effect.  Yes, there’s a difference because the defender is a public employee (and required to be part of the criminal justice system by the Sixth Amendment), but don’t dodge the larger point.

The Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct begins:  “A lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is . . . a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”  It later elaborates:  “As a public citizen, a lawyer should seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession.”  I learned that at Stanford.  Stanford seems to have forgotten it.

Perhaps naively, I have always felt that Stanford distinguished itself as one of the truly great modern universities that, while private, fully embraced its public moral duty to lead by open and fearless inquiry into whether its own governance of its awesome intellectual and financial resources exemplified the Right Way to Do Things.   But compare Stanford’s reaction here with the recent report of Yale’s “Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming” University facilities, some of which bear the names of slavery apologists and white supremacists.  Yale’s report was unstintingly open-minded in its confrontation of the difficult questions presented, and courageously self-critical on issues that are every bit as fraught, divisive and publicly contested as these.  Stanford’s gesture is by contrast censorious, closed-minded, mean-spirited, fearful, and small.  Shame.

--Bernie

Villanova Law Seeks Two: Endowed University Professor and Business Ethics Professor

As part of it's naming gift, the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law has established the Charles Widger University Professor in Law, Business and Economics. The position is envisioned as interdisciplinary, with the ability to teach in multiple schools at the university. We think it's a really exciting opportunity.

Villanova Law also seeks a junior professor in Business Ethics, and will consider junior laterals.

The press release, which provides much more information about these positions, is here.

Interested parties should contact the chair of our appointments committee Teri Ravenell: ravenell [at] law.villanova.edu

Duke Law Students Featured in Bloomberg View

A paper by a group of Duke law school students recently posted to SSRN is featured by Matt Levine in BloombergView today.  Says Levine:

Meanwhile in less-sovereign debt, the other day I mentioned that some law students may have found a solution to Puerto Rico's debt problems. Here it is; it relies on provisions in the Puerto Rico Civil Code to force creditors to come to the table, negotiate in good faith, and obtain equal benefits for all creditors. It's sort of an effort to construct a bankruptcy regime out of some vague equitable statements in existing law. I like it! Elsewhere here is a report on the "Origins of the Puerto Rico Fiscal Crisis."

I do not know whether to be jealous or proud . . . okay, decision made: Im proud!

Congratulations to Duke Law students Ryan Alexander Berger, Felix Aden, and Sigurdur K. Tryggvason!

Download their paper here.

Michael Schill Leaving Chicago To Head University Of Oregon

The University of Oregon has announced that Michael Schill, the Dean of the University of Chicago Law School, will be taking over as the President of UO.  Since the late Dave Frohnmayer - a former law professor - left the Oregon presidency six years ago, the school has had significant turnover in the job - with four different people having been President either in a permanent or interim capacity in that short period.  Schill has been Dean at Chicago since 2010 and served as Dean at UCLA before that.

A New Student Debt Ranking

By now, most Lounge readers are likely already familiar with SeekingArrangement, a website that connects sugar “babies” and “daddies.”  For those that aren’t, SeekingArrangement claims 3.6 million active members, 2.6 million of them babies and 1 million daddies (and, supposedly, mommas, though other references on the site are exclusively to daddies).

US Colleges With The Highest Number of Babies

According to the website, sugar daddies receive no strings attached relationships with attractive women. In exchange, sugar babies receive “shopping sprees, expensive dinners, and exotic travels,” a “mentor” who can provide “valuable guidance,” and the freedom to no longer worry about unpaid bills.

But that’s all old news. 

What is new news, according to the Atlantic, is the impact that the rising cost of student debt has had at SeekingArrangement.  Apparently, sugar daddies are rushing to the rescue at campuses across the country, volunteering to subsidize tuition costs:

What might have been little more than a nuisance in the past has turned into an outright hindrance to many students’ financial security: It takes about 14 years on average to pay off the debt. As a result, young women across the country are turning to sugar daddies in droves. Many of them use SeekingArrangement, which describes itself as "the world’s largest Sugar Daddy dating site." More than 1.4 million students have signed up as members, including nearly 1 million in the U.S., according to the company. The website claims that 42 percent of its members are students. . .

 

Colleges With The Highest "Babies" Growth (2014)

Georgia State, Arizona State and Kent State are all sugar baby hot spots.  But it is NYU, which charges $46,170 a student for tuition and fees, that this year became the first college ever to cross the "1000 sugar babies" threshold. 

(HT: Joan MacLeod Hemingway)

Sacvan Bercovitch (1933-2014)

I have just heard the sad news that Sacvan Bercovitch has passed away. He was for many years a professor of literature at Harvard (and towards the end of his career he was the Powell M. Cabot professor of literature, which as Wikipedia notes was Perry Miller's chair -- and I'd add Alan Heimert's as well.). And before Harvard he taught at Columbia for many years. Long before I met him I was intrigued by his name (it was a conjunction of Sacco and Vanzetti). And then there were his books American Jeremiad and The Puritan Origins of the American Self, which helped me understand early American literature in a more accessible way than Miller's books. I look forward to posting more tomorrow.

Wisconsin searching for Vice-Provost for Diversity

From our friends at the University of Wisconsin, comes an announcement that they're looking for a Vice Provost for Diversity (Chief Diversity Officer). Professor Brian Yandell of the Statistics Department is running the search.  The position announcement is here.

Drexel Seeks New Sociology Department Chair

I'm posting this a bit outside the expertise of our normal readership.  Please share this job announcement with friends who might be interested and qualified.  

Although the position description does not emphasize a search focused on candidates with a research interest in law and sociology, regular readers know that Drexel is actively engaged in expanding its footprint  in Law and Society.  Within Drexel's law school, we have several faculty trained and/or publishing at the intersection of law and sociology.  Our politics program is headed by Scott Barclay, a political scientist who is active in the Law and Society community.  Consequently, I encourage excellent candidates with deep expertise in law and sociology to consider applying for the position notwithstanding the fact that the field is not separately identified in the job description.

The Drexel Sociology Program expects to hire a new Department Head to lead the development of a newly aligned sociology department at Drexel University. We invite applications for this position at this time.

The successful candidate will hold the rank of Full Professor or be eligible to be a Full Professor and would be expected to begin September 1, 2015. This position continues Drexel's recent investment in the social sciences and its goal of creating a strong research and educational identity for a high profile sociology program at the university.

We are looking for candidates with evidence of innovative scholarship, national and/or international impact, and leadership experience. We are primarily interested in candidates whose expertise enhances one or more of the three current research foci of the sociology program: environmental sociology; medical sociology; or urban sociology. These areas are also central to Drexel's strategic plan, and the candidate should offer a vision for contributing to the university's strategic research initiatives in these areas. We are especially interested in applicants who can show evidence of an active research record combined with excellence in teaching and exceptional leadership skills.

We expect that our new colleague will help define and build the sociology department and participate in and initiate interdisciplinary collaborations across the Schools, Colleges, and Centers at Drexel. Faculty are currently involved, for example, with the Center for Science, Technology and Society, the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, and the Institute for Energy and Environment.

Candidates should include: 1) a cover letter; 2) curriculum vitae; 3) up to three samples of your scholarly writing; 4) a research statement; and 5) the names, institutional affiliation, and email addresses only of at least three references. Please do not submit reference letters at this time as such letters will be requested at a later date for short-listed applicants.

Review of applications will begin November 15, 2014 and continue until filled. Please address all queries to Prof.Kirk Heilburn at [email protected]. All applications must be submitted through www.drexeljobs.com. 

Beth Garrett Named President Of Cornell University

Elizabeth Garrett, the provost of the University of Southern California - and a law professor - has been named the new president of Cornell University.  She will take over in July.  Before joining USC, Garrett was on the University of Chicago Law faculty where she also served as Deputy Dean.

Florida State University Names State Senator As New President

The (expected) news that Florida State Senator John Thrasher has been named FSU's new leader is here.

This was a controversial search.  As the Chronicle details here:

The process in which the board selected Mr. Thrasher had been controversial almost from the beginning. In May, the board’s search committee drew protests from students and faculty members by announcing that Mr. Thrasher was the only candidate it planned to interview at its next meeting. In June, Florida State’s Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the search committee’s consulting firm, William Funk & Associates, which subsequently ceased its involvement with the renewed search process.

The no-confidence statement is here.  An op/ed opposing the hire is here.  The Tallahassee Democrat editorial opposing his hire is here.

Illinois Withdraws Faculty Offer To Aggressive Israel Critic

Was it his politics or his uncivil behavior?

According to this report from Inside Higher Education, Steven Salaita - formerly a controversial English professor at Virginia Tech - was offered a new tenured job in the American Indian studies program at the University of Illinois.  As with most offers, it was conditional on approval from Board.  The Board apparently will not even take a vote because Chancellor Phyllis Wise has announced the University will not be presenting his name for a vote.  The reason for this sudden change in plans?  From Inside Higher Ed:

The sources familiar with the university's decision say that concern grew over the tone of his comments on Twitter about Israel's policies in Gaza. While many academics at Illinois and elsewhere are deeply critical of Israel, Salaita's tweets have struck some as crossing a line into uncivil behavior.

For instance, there is this tweet: "At this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised? #Gaza." Or this one: "By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say antisemitic shit in response to Israeli terror." Or this one: "Zionists, take responsibility: if your dream of an ethnocratic Israel is worth the murder of children, just fucking own it already."

Since Salaita did not yet have tenure at Illinois, is this just a case study of why tenure matters?  Is former AAUP President Cary Nelson right in backing the Chancellor's decision, arguing:

"I ... do not know of another search committee that had to confront a case where the subject matter of academic publications overlaps with a loathsome and foul-mouthed presence in social media. I doubt if the search committee felt equipped to deal with the implications for the campus and its students." 

Please skip inflammatory or non-substantive comments.