Trump, Lessig, and the Problems of the Political System

There's been a lot of attention to Donald Trump lately, rather more than I think is deserved.  (The Huffington Post had it right putting him in the entertainment section.)   Still, I think the Trump Phenomenon, if not the person, are worthy of some note.

People like Trump tend to attract attention when there is a void in the political system.  If you look at the national debate right now, it is focused on issues-the Confederate Flag, gay and transgender rights, Iran--that are pretty far removed from the average person's concerns.   The mainstream presidential candidates are either relatives of former presidents (Clinton, Bush) or people, including Sanders and nearly all the Republicans, who strike most people as second tier.   So there is an opening for someone who, however crudely, expresses many people's anxieties with their own future and that of the political system.

The typical response of those dissatisfied with the political system is to talk about campaign finance (Lawrence Lessig is a prime example.)  But financing is only one small part of it.   A more meaningful reform would have to address the entire way that we elect presidents, and everyone else, from geographic districts to the electoral college to everything else in between.  I'll be addressing these issues in a subsequent post.

are conservatives really on the defensive?

There's a lot of talk now about a liberal moment and conservatives being on the run.   The gay marriage ruling, health care, and the taking down of (some) Confederate flags are cited as evidence.  One was has written of "peak leftism" as a cultural phenomenon.

I'm less convinced.   Consider a few facts:

1.  Most of these "liberal" decisions are in fact being made by conservatives.   The swing votes on the Supreme Court are Roberts and Kennedy--hardly liberals by any definition.   The Confederate flag thing was started by two Republican governors.   If it's such a liberal moment, why are conservatives making the decisions?

2.  You have to distinguish conservative from populist causes.   There's nothing inherently conservative, certainly not Republican, about the Confederate flag.   Gay marriage is a hybrid cause: the gay part progressive, the marriage part traditional.    Even Obamacare was orginally a Republican proposal.   To a large extent, these issues releate to generational changes and/or changed situations rather than underlying philosophical issues.

3.  To the extent that these issues affect national politics, they probably help Republicans.   Instead of people screaming that they lost their insurance or can't get married, there will now be people screaming that their premiums are going up or their church is being picked on.   People in 1964-65 thought there would be a permanent Democratic majority.   It didn't turn out that way.

What I do think is happening is that a certain historical phase--what we might call the southernization or the wallaceization of the national Republican Party--has more or less run it course.   This phase was characterized by the GOP becoming, rather than a genuinely conservative party, something more akin to right-wing populists.    At a recent Republican event, I was depressed to hear speakers rattling off a list of issues--taxes, ISIS, cultural changes--as if they were running against Jimmy Carter, or at very best Al Gore.

The flip side is that a Republican who can distance themselves from the tone of cultural resentment, focusing on economic growth and exhibiting a mixture of personal conservatism but tolerance for cultural diversity, has a good chance of breaking this mold.   This is particularly true if they are running against someone, like Hillary Clinton, whose enthusiasm for recent changes is pretty clearly of the convenient variety.   President Rubio, anyone?

. . . and a word on reparations

I've gotten interested in the issue of reparations to African-Americans and other minority groups.   No, not just because I like quixotic causes, but because of the parallel to Holocaust Reparations on which I've previously written.   My recent trip to Russia, which talked briefly about reparations to victims of the purges, famines, etc. but then retreated, also plays a role.

The logic of reparations is more convincing than one might think.  It's pretty clear that black people had their labor and sometimes their lives taken without compensation under slavery and, to a degree, the later Jim Crow laws.   Some have suggested that today's "mass incarceration" is a continuation of this process, although I don't know if anyone's suggested reparations for that.   There are a host of technical questions (who gets paid, how much, etc.) but that's always the case.

The bigger problem is the perverse nature of reparations.  Reparations tend to get paid when either i. the country making the payments was defeated in war (Germany) or ii. circumstances have changed so dramatically than no one seriously defends the original outrage (Japanese-American internment).   It also helps if iii. the offense complained of has been over for a long time and has little chance of being renewed.   When these circumstances don't apply, reparations are much less likely.   To put it more cynically, a large-scale, continuing abuse is often a weaker candidate for reparations than one in the past, because the payments would be larger and the logic reparations would require deeper, ongoing changes in the society in question.

Given this difficulty, the model of transitional or "restorative" justice has considerable appeal.   Instead of punishing transgressors and paying monetary compensation, this model emphasizes the gathering of historical facts and the institution of steps that prevent a recurrence of the original abuse in the future.   The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is an example of this process.   The Memorial organization in Russia, now under severe pressure from the Government, has sought a similar approach.   The two approaches are not mutually exclusive--South Africa is paying a symbolic amount to some victims of apartheid--but the emphasis is different.

In any event, it's an interesting and provocative issue, and one that makes you rethink the common assumption that America is "better" or "more moral" than other countries.   (Russia used to have more people in prison than we do, but we're way ahead now.)   I'll be thinking and writing more about it in the coming months.

republican candidates forum . . .

The Northeast Republican Leadership Forum is in town, so I stopped in for a few hours yesterday, thereby spending 50-plus dollars and missing all the major candidates.   (We're going to New York later this afternoon, and I'm not spending $35 on Rick Santorum.)   It was an interesting experience but also a little bit frustrating.

The interesting part is that Republicans are, well, very polite and generally full of sunshine as we reach the twilight of the Obama years.   Everything was in place and they even had a fee structure ($50 for Scott Walker or Chris Christie, $35 for Santorum, George Pataki and Lindsey Graham free) that pretty well reflects the market.  Pataki gave a better speech than I expected, talking about things like religion, military service, and other forms of sacrifice, although why that would make him a good President I have no idea.

The down side is that it's basically the same crowd that's attended these events for the last 20 years.   Almost everybody is white and there aren't many young people except the staff.   It looks like the same people who go to hockey games, which I suppose it more or less is.

The arguments are a little stale too.   Basically a lot of people are still running against Jimmy Carter.   We'll cut your taxes, we'll beat up on (ISIS/Saddam Hussein/The Soviet Union), we'll uphold traditional values.    It was a great message in 1978, but a lot of voters weren't born then.

In fairness, this is a summer gathering of people with nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon.   This morning I watched videos of Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and they're rather more in touch with the times, or at least a slice of them.  Rubio in particular as a compelling life story if he can resist the tendency to be a bit goofy.   I suspect that either he or Walker would have more appeal to young voters than many people imagine.

But I think the party as a whole needs to get a little more culturally in touch if it is to win on more than a cyclical, reactive basis.    Small towns, churches, and the military are all important but most people live in cities and haven't served in the army.   It's less a question of the message than getting people to listen to you in the first place.    A Republican espresso bar, anyone?

wasn't X supposed to be behind us?

Some interesting columns have appeared lately asking why there's so much racial unrest at a time that we have a Black (or in any event, mixed-race) President and more interracial contact than ever.  Wasn't this supposed to be behind us?   Maybe not.

There's a theory that there is sometimes a "last gasp" of racism at the very point when it seems to have disappeared.   The theory is that people see the last vestiges of their racial/cultural identity disappearing and are moved to act in the opposite direction.   The theory--really a hypothesis, since it's more or less impossible to test--is sometimes used to explain the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, which began in a country (Germany) that had a relatively high degree of racial mixing.

It's interesting, although not especially heartening, to think of the implications of this theory for the gay community.   Many people are saying that, if the Supreme Court supports same-sex marriage, the issue will be "over" for the foreseeable future.   People said the same thing about race in 1964/65, and antisemitism a generation earlier.   But these things are rarely "over."   Groups that win A ask for B, while majorities frequently find backup strategies to use against assertive minorities.    Not a terribly cheerful view, I realize, but I think a pragmatic one.  

In the Passover Seder, it says that you have to relive the Exodus every year, the implication being that otherwise it will be reversed.     I think something like this applies to all social changes.   It's an easy lesson to forget, but one history conspires to remind us of.

The South Carolina Case

I don't know how the case will come out, although I suspect it will be harder to convict the cop of anything beyond manslaughter or the S.C. equivalent.   He looks to me like someone who panicked rather than someone really evil.  Then again, the guy is still dead.

I do find some of the outrage from white liberals hypocritical.   People have been cheering the
"reduced crime rate" and the "improved policing" that caused it for at least two decades.  They knew, or should have known, what it involved: more or less systematic intimidation of population groups who were perceived, rightly or wrongly, as potential criminals.   It's like the North, which made a fortune from the slave trade, turning around and saying, "the slaves in the South were mistreated?   We had absolutely no idea."

Without this debate, this kind of thing will keep happening, prosecuting the individual cops is unavoidable but it won't change the result.

she's in . . .

I found the Clinton announcement, or what I saw of it, to be slick, well-presented,   . . . and almost wholly insincere.  I think she's basically trying to be a softer version of Elizabeth Warren: "the deck is stacked against you, I'll help you compete," that sort of thing.   Where were they for the last 20 years while the deck allegedly was stacked in this way?

I still think the Democratic primaries will be more interesting than people think.   People need a story, and a coronation isn't a story.   Look for someone--O'Malley, Webb, Warren as a write-in, whoever--to be the next story and see what happens.

history, memory, and yet another museum

I spent my second to last day in Moscow at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, in an outlying district right next door to the building where the Passover Seder was held.   The museum is very impressive and up-to-date--I noticed that one Vladimir Putin was among the contributors--and it certainly has a story to tell.   By and large it's honest, mentioning pogroms and Soviet antisemitism alongside the happier aspects of the Russian Jewish story.   It's a shorter story than you might think, since there weren't many Jews on Russian territory until the Polish Partitions, although they certainly made up for it afterwards.    And it isn't over yet: notwithstanding a vast emigration, there are still perhaps a million Jews in Russia, about half of them in Moscow, and others in Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, and so on.  It's even possible that they'll outlast the American Jewish community, although that may overstate things.  

It was interesting how the museum integrated Russian and Jewish life (the audience is mostly Russian and the English translations are somewhat incomplete).   There are predictable things like
shtetl life, the Holocaust, and so forth.   But there's also a whole section on Soviet Jewish war correspondents, like Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg, who are largely unknown in the west, and recorded statements from war veterans, complete with a T-34 tank.   I suppose this is no different from the American Museum of Jewish History, which includes some unhappy themes but tries to make the case that "we're Americans too."   Another example, I suppose, that after a time there's no history but only memory, which is inevitably what you make of it.

The "tolerance" part was rather limited--mostly a film and some interactive iPad material--and seemed more or less modeled on the MOT (Museum of Tolerance) in Los Angeles, which has essentially the same goal.

Across the street from the museum was a Jewish grocery which, this being Passover, was selling primarily matza and a few related items.   Like everything else in Russia, the matza was big, coming in boxes twice the American size.   I bought one box, why I don't know, mostly for the cover with Cyrillic writing I suppose.   If I'm lucky I'll eat half of it before I go home.   At least it stopped snowing, a nice metaphor for a population that has seen tough times but somehow keeps on going.

more from russia: museums and memories

Taking a break from conferencing, I spent Saturday morning at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Pobedy (Victory) Park.   It was rather different than an American war museum, rather as if the war had ended, say, last Thursday afternoon.   There were streams of kids in one kind of another of scout uniform listening to speeches that had words like pobedy (victory), narod (nation/people), and so forth sprinkled through them.   You could buy models of every conceivable Russian and even German tank, plane, or ship at the store downstairs.   There's even an Orthodox Church, added later, on the way in and supposedly a synagogue down the hill, although it wasn't too easy to find.

It's odd, but the museum reminded me less of the Mall in Washington and more of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, complete with a large memory hall, books with the names of the dead, and a large tower overlooking the building.   The themes are somewhat inverse--it's the hall of Remembrance and Sorrow, i.e., victory then lamentation, whereas Yad Vashem puts the Shoah before the Ge'vurah, although that too is occasionally reversed.    But the sense of immediacy is there, as if it could all happen with insufficient vigilance tomorrow, as if no one is quite complete without going there.

Not that there isn't another side to things.   For everyone raising money for Donbass there are twenty people sitting in cafes listening to American music and playing with their iPhones.  (I've seen the same video about Los Angeles seven times.)   Restaurant entrees have English-sounding names and McDonald's, rather more upscale than at home, does a brisk business.   And even a sense of humor about history: several different pairs of people, one dressed as Lenin and the other as Stalin, meander through Red Square posing for photographs which they don't usually bother to charge you for.

It's hard to get out of your own culture and sometimes you shouldn't try.   When I see celebrations of Putin or when conference speakers talk about the need to protect Russian "sovereignty" and administrative discretion I inevitably wince.   I suppose many foreigners felt that way about Reagan, Bush, and so forth.   But I do think it's possible to maintain  your values without necessarily feeling superior to others or thinking you're necessarily smarter than they are.   Certainly the art, music, and architecture here, especially in the older areas not rebuilt in the '30s and '40s, are second to none.

The other night I attended a Passover Seder in an outlying area near the Jewish Museum.  It was mostly expatriates--the rabbi was from New York--but still had something of a Russian flavor.   Afterward I staggered out into the snow and marveled at the randomness of things.   With a couple of different moves couldn't I be living in Moscow, my father a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, and myself  going to websites where Stalin was Roosevelt, Putin was Reagan, and Gorbachev was a Russian Jimmy Carter?   It's an interesting thought.

more from moscow

A long conference in Russian with running English translations.   Today it's mostly quasi-official speakers so hard to know how representative.   Still a few comments:

1.   The principal theme is state sovereignty and the rule of law, which means that the west should stop interfering in Russian affairs.  Whatever one thinks of this, if the goal of sanctions, etc. was to get Russia to think more like the west, that isn't happening, at least not at the top.

2.    The effect of historical memory is as salient here as in the street.   Someone was announced as a war veteran and received prolonged applause.  There's a breakout panel on legal innovations resulting from The Great Patriotic War.

3.    They don't seem to have gotten the memo on gender equity--not many women on the podium--but a lot more at the younger levels.

All in all the breakfast buffet at Cafe Tchaikovsky, including a full pot of Russian Tea, was a pretty good bet even if cheaper alternatives were available.   I'll be back with more tomorrow.

first day russia

The first thing that strikes you in Russia is that nothing is small.   There are forests on the way in from the airport to Moscow, and traffic jams that pile up regardless of the hour.   What looks like a short walk on the map . . . isn't.

The second thing is that, even more than the American South, it's the proof of the adage that the past isn't over . . . it isn't even past.   Airport ads show pictures of victorious Soviet soldiers in 1945.   Electronic billboards advertise movies about Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and other 70-year old battles.    Even the war against Napoleon feels like it ended last Thursday.

But tradition has a softer side, too.   Tea still comes in a pot that's placed over a slow burner at the table.   Even the Starbucks-type chains have nicely dressed waitpersons and are scrupulously polite.   The one I'm sitting in now has a poem about writers and coffee on the wall (my Russian is always good enough to know what people are talking about but never to know what they're saying).

The oddest thing to me is the similarity to that other pseudo-western country that I spend time in, the one in the Middle East.   I guess it's no surprise since the original Israelis basically came from here.   But the atmosphere, the mix of warmth toward those inside the circle and at best ambivalence toward those outside it, is oddly reminiscent of north Tel Aviv.   Wait, next you'll tell me the collective farm isn't really a Jewish concept, that Tolstoy talked about it decades earlier, and . . .

More tomorrow.

The Indiana Law

I've written on this issue before, but I'll repeat: I'm skeptical.   People have a right to think whatever they want about marrying other men (women), Jews, etc.  But if you say "I won't follow that law because it violates my religious beliefs," that's a pretty broad exception.   Suppose that I have a deeply held belief that I shouldn't stand too close to women other than my wife.     Can I then say that no women can come into my store?    Wouldn't it make more sense to avoid retail sales and start another business?  

I realize this is an oversimplification: it's not an easy issue.   But the precedent remains dangerous.     It's hard to escape that the real argument is that gays have some lower level of protection than other minority groups.    And that's potentially quite troublesome.

more on oklahoma

As suggested here, the New York Times has reported that the racist song heard on a tape at the University of Oklahoma was nothing new, but had been taught at a national convention of the relevant fraternity and was part of the regular ritual of the local chapter.   The article also reports that both liberal and conservative experts believe the decision to expel the relevant students had no serious legal basis.

In good conscience, the university should admit that it made a mistake and readmit the students, following appropriate apologies and some effort to compensate the offended parties. This might take the form of community service or other work on behalf of minority groups.

The fraternity is another matter.   I still believe it was an error to close it down immediately because it made further investigation difficult.   But plainly the culture at SAE, and OU generally, was accepting or even encouraging of overtly racist sentiment, and further effort to root that out seems both necessary and appropriate.

last word on the election (i promise)

Peter Beinart has a column saying Netanyahu's win means it's impossible to change Israel and one has to turn to external pressure instead.   This apparently means American political pressure, some limited kind of sanctions (occupation products only), that kind of thing.   I think that's a mistake.

The Israeli left is only 6-8 seats from taking control, maybe less.   Herzog needs to go back and continue expanding Labor, maybe adding Meretz (or its members, anyway) or reaching some kind of long-term agreement with Lapid.   That takes him to 35-40 seats and he's already the largest party.   Meanwhile Netanyahu's coalition will be inherently unstable--he has to have at least one partner (Kulanu?) that wants major economic changes and he's totally alienated the US--and he can't be more than a few years from retirement, anyway.

I also think that "pressure" is harder to control than you think.  There's no obvious stopping point.   And it certainly won't strengthen the position of moderates within Israel.

Sometimes you have to take a deep breath and think things over.   Netanyahu is 65 years old.  Sooner or later, he is going to lose.  The question is what comes after him.      Taking a long view is harder than venting, but it's usually more productive.

israeli elections--part two

I don't think Netanyahu's "victory" changes much.   More than half the electorate clearly wants change of some kind, probably including some of the younger Likud people.   They don't quite trust the left to provide it, understandably given its past record, but they're looking for someone who will.

I think it will remain more or less logjammed until someone is able to put together a multi-ethnic, post-Zionist party that can win a clear plurality of the electorate.   Imagine if Obama said, "I want a progressive majority but I won't make deals with any Black or Hispanic leader in order to achieve it."   That's sort of the position the Israeli left is in now, and it's actually pretty impressive that they can reach an effective tie that way.   But not more.

the israeli elections--part one

Too early to tell what happens, probably a unity government, couple of other thoughts:

1.   Very impressive that Kulanu/Kahalon will get 10 seats or so.   There's no precise precedent for his movement.   It's much more than I would have expected.

2.   It's the beginning of the end of the narrow ethnic parties.   If you add Labor/Livni, Likud, Yesh Atid, and Kulanu it's something like 75-80 seats, if you count Meretz more.   The only really sizable ethnic party is the Combined Arab List and they aren't really one party, anyway.

3.  I think you're also seeing the beginning of the end of the exclusion of Israeli Arabs from meaningful political power.   There's just no way the center/left can get to a majority without working with them officially or otherwise.   As the ethnic strain begins to decline it will become more anomalous to exclude them.

It's interesting to think what would happen if Israelis and Palestinians held a joint election.   If everyone voted the way they do now, the largest single party would probably be Hamas followed by Likud, Labor, the PLO, and various narrower groupings.   But of course that wouldn't happen: someone would eventually figure out that a party appealing to Jews and Arabs was the only way to prevent the extremists of one side or another from taking control.   It was interesting, in this context, that Hamas called on people to vote for the Arab List rather than simply not participating.   Is it possible that, deep down, they know that it won't end with armed struggle, but with some kind of political settlement?

"There's no alternative . . . "

. . . to Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

I think this is basically nonsense.   Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and any number of current or former Democratic governors or senators are as or more qualified than Obama was in 2008, or for that matter than several of the Republican candidates.   I think this is essentially a smokescreen being put up by the Clintons to distract attention from her obviously flawed rollout.   If Clinton were to drop out, within six weeks you would see a series of imperfect but very credible candidates.  

I just don't think it's convincing.

is oklahoma covering up a bigger scandal?

A scandal has arisen over a video showing members of the SAE Fraternity at U. of Oklahoma singing an openly racist song on a bus.   Although some words are hard to hear, the overall lyric seems clear:

There will never be a n----- SAE
There will never be a n----- SAE
You can hang him from a tree
But it will never start? with me 
There will never be a n----- SAE

There are a couple of interesting things here.   The first is that it's almost certain the song, or versions of it, go back a long way.   Nobody talks about lynching people today, and the italicized lines appear to constitute a promise that the singer will not break the chain of an all-white fraternity, which was in fact broken some time ago (there was at least one African-American member at Oklahoma and others at different universities).    It's also interesting that at least one participant was apparently a freshman, who most likely learned it from older members.

There is also evidence that the same or similar performances were made by other Oklahoma students, and by fraternity members at other universities, prior to this one.   A video of the SAE house mother repeating the n-word, supposedly miming a rap video, is currently making the Internet rounds.

I don't have any particular sympathy for the two dismissed students or the SAE Fraternity, although I think they should be provided with some kind of (preferably public) hearing, as a procedural matter and also to investigate whether others were involved.   But the rush to expel them and to close down the fraternity inevitably makes one wonder if a larger problem is being covered up.   As stated above, it boggles the mind to think that these kids came up with this on their own, and there's a wealth of emerging evidence that they did it.   Is OU President David Boren, a national political figure, really trying to get to the bottom of this, or acting to protect his own brand?

the senate iran letter

Didn't like it.  I think inviting Netanyahu was borderline--he made a good speech and the protocol issue is more complicated than it seems.  But writing to a foreign leader is over the line.   What if Nixon had written to Hanoi in 1968 saying, "Don't negotiate with these chumps, I'm going to be elected in November, I'll settle the thing."   He sort of did this, with his "secret plan," but at least he followed the rules.   This doesn't.

Now, if they threaten to drop Lindsey Graham on Teheran, that's a different story . . .

the clinton emails

I think the Democrats are making an enormous mistake in having effectively only one candidate and we're beginning to see why.

It's not that the emails are such a big scandal--it will pass.   It's that a one-person race almost demands constant scandals.  There must be a thousand reporters ready to cover the Democratic primaries.   If there's no race to cover, what are they going to do?   Look for scandals . . . or have nothing to write, and lose one of the biggest opportunities of their career.

The best thing the Democrats could do is come up with a serious challenger.   Warren, Webb, Woodrow Wilson it doesn't matter.    The frontrunner usually wins, anyway.   But trying to clear the field is a recipe for disaster.   It's already happening.

The barista . . .

. . . just made me a double macchiato when I ordered a single.   But she's smart, she's pretty, she plays in a rock band . . . and she's new.   I'm going to drink half of it and not say anything.   When it comes down to it, I'm basically a wimp.

I'M SORRY I MISSED THAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY REPEAT IT

Why is there an inverse correlation between the interest level of people's conversations (especially cellphone conversations) and the volume at which they conduct them?   If I hear another conversation on the level of  "OK THE DRYWALL WILL BE READY ON TUESDAY MORNING" I am going to scream.   But only at low volume.

the rutgers law "merger": lots of form, not much substance

I believe it was Fred Rodell who said there were only two problems with most law reviews: style and content.   I think a lot about that remark when contemplating the proposed merger of the Camden and Newark Law Schools into one "R-Law" brand.   The proposal is high on form, but low on content, and the style is--well, read on.

The merger was originally prompted by a desire to fend off a proposed takeover of the Camden law school by Rowan University, which was perceived as less prestigious than Rutgers.   An unstated goal is to distract attention from the relatively poor performance of both, but especially the Camden, law schools since the Rowan proposal was blocked.   In the most recent US News survey, the Camden law school ranked 81and Newark 83; since Camden has since been forced to accept more (read weaker) students by the central administration, there is a good chance it will fall out of the top 100 in the next survey.    It is important to remember that these are relative numbers, so the excuse of the national law school crisis doesn't really apply.

What else has Camden done since the Rowan fiasco?   So far as I can tell three main things.   First, it hired about a half dozen new faculty, all or nearly all women and heavily concentrated in the areas of law and philosophy, on the one hand, and what might be called progressive social change--primarily race and gender studies--on the other.   This is at the same time that at least two practice-oriented faculty have retired and the salaries and research budgets of remaining professors have been frozen or reduced.   To remedy the deficit in business subjects, the law school administration proposed to hire a Canadian legal philosopher with a side interest in business transactions and little if any practice experience.

Second the Camden campus--the one whose largest unit (the law school) is supposed to be merging with Newark--has decided to spend an extraordinary and unprecedented sum on administrative expenses.   There is currently a campus-wide "chancellor" (salary in the $400,000 range); provost ($300,000); and there will soon be a highly compensated campus research director, for aggregate salaries of about $1 million on a campus that one can literally throw a stone across in a good wind.    This is, in fairness, a university-wide problem, which the faculty union is bitterly protesting and may need to a campus-wide strike next year.

Finally, the law school has actually reduced the budget for adjunct faculty, who are the most cost effective and the most likely to have contacts that can help students get jobs.

Oh, did I mention that the law school emphasizes two-year employment statistics and brags of its placement of students in judicial clerkships?   The vast majority of these clerkships are with local New Jersey courts and there is little if any evidence that they lead to permanent jobs.

Not surprisingly for a school that emphasizes race, gender and philosophy and has a history of misleading employment statistics, the Camden law school has had trouble attracting students.   Hence the merger, which it is hoped will improve its marketing or (at very least) distract attention by rolling the law school's statistics into the larger university.  

The problem is that the merger, as almost anyone can say, has little if any substance.  As best as I can tell, it consists largely of an administrative reshuffling together with the addition of one small distance learning classroom, with a capacity of perhaps 30-add students, and for which there will be a waiting list to be filled.   Even if this room were in nonstop use, that would leave something like 90-95 percent of the students in each law school having essentially no contact with the other school at any time in the day.   Camden and Newark are 100 miles apart, and (so far as I know) there has been no effort even to introduce the two faculties to each other, although one if apparently planned later this year.

Nor will the merger do much to promote diversity, which the administration likes to talk about but does relatively little to accomplish.   Camden has a reputation as a largely white law school, with Newark somewhat more open-minded: in the last three years I don't think I've had more than a handful of minority students.   With the two school rolled into one, there will be little if any incentive to change that.

The Rutgers merger is a good example of how form frequently trumps substance, especially when the industry in question (here law schools) is in a crisis mode.   Will they get away with it?  For a time, perhaps.    But the facts have a way of catching up with you.   Instead of dealing honestly and forthrightly with a crisis--one largely, although not exclusively, of its own making--Rutgers is attempting to pull a fast one.    I think that, deep down, the participants themselves realize this.    Do they really think nobody else will notice?

Dylan and Sinatra: So Different, and Yet . . .

I happened to finish reading a biography of Bob Dylan, and start reading a biography of Frank Sinatra, and more or less the same time that Dylan released an album of Sinatra covers ("Shadows in the Night") last week.    The two have more in common than might first appear.

Both Sinatra and Dylan came from places--Hoboken, New Jersey and Hibbing, Minnesota--that were well off the beaten track at the time.   Both came from minority groups (Italians, Jews) that--again, in the relevant time and place--were considered cultural outsiders.   Although Sinatra obviously has the more pleasing voice, both sang in a markedly different way than anyone else, and achieved fame less by having a "better" voice than a more distinctive and recognizable one.

There are some interesting similarities in their career trajectories, as well.    Both rocketed to fame in their twenties and were considered washed up somewhere in their thirties, Sinatra's comeback beginning with From Here to Eternity and the Capitol recordings in the 1950s, Dylan's arguably waiting until Time Out of Mind in the '90s, although there were several intermediate "comebacks" before that.    Both balanced a number of marriages against a habit of indulgence with other women, although there is no legend of Dylan's physique to match Sinatra's (it must be noted that the latter is based on circumstantial evidence, all of it provided by people who, well, liked him).  

And of course, both were rather difficult people, but that pretty much goes without saying.   (They did meet, Dylan performing at Sinatra's 80th birthday party, although I suspect this was a bigger deal to the former than the latter.)

There are a lot of differences, of course.   Dylan remains counterculture-oriented, at least in theory, even in his old age; Sinatra was resolutely mainstream.   Dylan had a middle class upbringing that was, if anything, somewhat boring; Sinatra's was anything but.   Dylan, for better or worse, writes nearly all his own songs; Sinatra almost never did.   And it would be hard to confuse them, in person or on their records.

The Dylan/Sinatra album has received excellent reviews, BTW, although I suspect he could record the Friday night service and get good reviews at this point.   Come to think of it, he DID record a version of the Amidah ("Father of the Night") once, together with a song ("Forever Young") that's more or less a takeoff on the priestly blessing.   Which leads to one final difference: Dylan, who was born and by most lights remains Jewish, had a born again Christian period.  Sinatra didn't have to.

harvard bans faculty relationships with undergraduate students

It's hard to escape the implication that relationships with graduate students are, well, OK.  OTOH a great question for my Legislation final.    I wonder if it has a retroactive effective date?

Netanyahu and Congress

I feel about Netanyahu's speech to Congress more or less the way I feel about Pete Carroll's decision to throw the ball: I think it's a dumb decision but I think it's being overrated.

Granted it's foolish to go behind Obama's back, at least without a heads up.   But is it really that unprecedented for foreign leaders to appeal directly to Congress?   All sorts of people have done this and everyone knows that they're trying to put pressure on the President by doing so.

I'm also concerned about the implicit stereotypes in Netanyahu's portrayal.   He pushed to the head of the line in Paris.   He's rude to Obama.   You don't have to be paranoid to see a certain cultural archetype being presented there, or in the whole "good Israeli/bad Israeli" way in which the country's politicians are depicted.

I don't like Netanyahu because I think he's an ineffective leader.   But any Israeli prime minister would be frustrated with a dysfunctional American political system and the weak, quasi-isolationist foreign policy that goes with it.   I don't think he's really disrespecting Obama any more than Putin, the Chinese leadership, or for that matter our European allies.    If the US continues to vacillate between periods of excessive intervention and periods of retrenchment, driven by domestic politics rather than foreign realities, it is going to lose people's respect and they are going to act accordingly.  Israel is just one example.

the super bowl call

It was a bad decision to throw instead of hand the ball to Marshawn Lynch, but I think too much is being made of it.    The slant works about 80 percent of the time.   The defender just guessed right and made a great play.   Also, luck sort of evens out over time.   The Patriots lost two Super Bowls they probably should have won: now they won one they should have lost.

I think Brady would be wise to retire, but I don' t think he will.   I do think it's the last Super Bowl that they'll win.    Unless they get lucky again.

charles blow meets chris kyle

As has been widely reported NYT columnist Charles Blow's son was stopped at gunpoint by a cop on the Yale Campus.   Blow, and presumably his son, are African-American.

Now it is being reported in some "conservative" outlets that the cop was also Black.   This is being taken to vitiate the impact of the story.

I don't get this.   Blacks can be prejudiced no less than whites.   And even if the cop was justified in making the stop, it is still an experience that most white students wouldn't have, and remains troubling on that level.

I especially find the lack of empathy troubling here (Nick Kristof has a piece on a similar subject also in today's Times).   As in the American Sniper case, everyone is responding to these things based on their political impact.   The human tragedy in both cases is almost totally lost.   This bodes poorly for dialogue and the very existence of civil society.   You can't improve things if you can't listen, even if it's people you don't like.

People who talk about "civility" ought to think of this aspect, as well.

american sniper

So I saw commercial movies two days in a row, something that will almost certainly never happen again in my life.   This time it was "American Sniper," the megahit directed by Clint Eastwood about Chris Kyle, the highly decorated Iraq veteran who was killed by another veteran, whom he was trying to help, a couple of years ago.

Couple of comments:

1.  Quality.--I thought it was very good, a much better movie than "Selma," although lacking equivalent moral inspiration.    This may have been intentional, see below.   Bradley Cooper was absolutely astounding--I had trouble telling which was the real guy (at the end) and which the actor.

2.  Message.--A lot of people saw this movie as celebrating war generally and (specifically) the war in Iraq.    I wonder if they say the same movie that I did.   What I saw was a guy, courageous but wholly naive, thrown into a situation he knew nothing about, brutalized beyond belief, then (with others like him) more or less abandoned when he came home.   And the movie is clear that his redemption, so to speak, comes when he stops trying to save Americans by killing Iraqis and starts trying to save Americans by, well, saving Americans, with this charitable and rehabilitation work.    If this was a prowar movie, I'd hate to see an antiwar one.

3.  Eastwood.--I can't speak for others, but his movies--notably Letters from Iwo Jima (the one from the Japanese viewpoint) and this one--affected me more than any other "antiwar" films.   It may be that people want an anti-Bush movie rather than an anti-war movie.   But I think it's much more effective this way.   You can hate Bush and still want more wars: all you have to do is say, the next President (Obama, Clinton, maybe another Bush) is more honest so this time it's OK.   Eastwood's message is universal.

It was interesting to see this and Selma on successive days.   Selma was a somewhat wooden movie with a deep emotional core.   American Sniper was a very powerful movie with a somewhat hollow or empty core.   But I think that was Eastwood's point: this guy was incredibly heroic, but what exactly was he fighting for?   The irony is that Selma, which is supposed to be a "critical" film, finishes up in an almost celebratory mode.   American Sniper, supposed to be "conservative," left me deeply disturbed. 

P.S. To give you an idea of the impact of this movie, if you Google "American," it comes up third after American Airlines and American Eagle (really the same thing).   If you try "Chris Kyle," it comes up by the time you reach "Ch."   That can't be all people who want to redeem George Bush.

Selma

I saw it this afternoon with perhaps 10 other people in the theater--not bad for 1:00 pm on a Tuesday in an industrial park.  

Some random reactions:

1.  I thought the movie was a little wooden, but it got points for sticking to the story (more or less) and avoiding the feelgood, we-can-make-even-the-Holocaust-into-a-happy-story feel.    The acting was generally good, and it brought in a lot of people, like Diane Nash and Viola Luzzo, who had not obvious star appeal.    It was also a good decision to keep a narrow focus on Selma rather than trying to tell the whole Civil Rights story.

2.  I wasn't as bothered by the LBJ characterization as some others.    The details may be inaccurate, but the overall idea--that Johnson was trying to play both ends off against the middle, and had to be pushed by the civil rights movement into moving faster than he otherwise would have--is more or less true.   The actor didn't look much like Johnson, but that's probably just as well.

3.  Speaking of actors--the guy who played Andrew Young must have been either Andrew Young or his grandson.   There was a scene with about a half dozen people and you could tell it was him in about a second.   I didn't recognize Opra Winfrey until the credits, so I guess that's good acting, too.

Overall you would probably be better off seeing the "Eyes on the Prize" series than this movie, but you'd also be better off watching Shoah than Schindler's List, and so forth.   The fact is that about a zillion times more people watch Hollywood movies than historical documentaries.   So a movie like this does more good than harm, and that's worth celebrating.

Note: I'm writing a book on law, history and memory, so no snide comments about "how come you get to to a movie on a weekday afternoon."   I'm even planning to deduct it!

And now that the game is over . . .

. . . a great win for Seattle, but also a good example of how people make questionable decisions based on recent experience.

In retrospect it's pretty clear that a 12-point lead, on the road, against an explosive team is not really all that much.    So the Packers should never have been as conservative as they were on their last couple of possessions.    But Seattle had had zero offense--literally, zero--to that point and it seemed like the right thing to everyone, myself included.  It just didn't turn out that way.

I've always been skeptical of the Moneyball concept, that is, the idea that statistics or computer-driven data should take the place of common sense decisions.    Maybe this is one time they should have.   But of course, a computer would never have told Russell Wilson to throw a 40- or 50-yard pass on the game's last play, which is exactly what he did.   And won the game.

Congratulations Seahawks!

Waiting for The Game to start . . .

A perfect? Sunday: working on my novel, working on my mother's taxes, and getting ready to watch the NFC Championship Game.    Don't know what will happen, but let me say in advance: I LOVE RICHARD SHERMAN.  Imagine trying to stay with someone who has 9.5 speed and knows exactly where he's going, and you don't.    Imagine also trying to time your leap when you don't know when or even if the ball is coming.    And imagine doing that, not one time, but every play for 60 minutes, with almost flawless results.   If I could do that, I would mouth off to the media now and then, too.   Come to think of it, I CAN'T do that, and I mouth off anyway.    So which of us is a better person?     Don't even think about answering.    See you after the game.

Thoughts on the College Playoffs

I fell asleep in the third quarter of Ohio State-Alabama, but that won't stop me from commenting: 

1.  The playoff has clearly been vindicated.   Under the BCS rules, Alabama would have played Oregon or (more likely) Florida State with OSU completely out of it.   Plainly, these wouldn't have been the best teams.

2.   It's equally clear that the SEC has been overrated: most likely, a combination of inertia and the conference publicity machine fed by TV networks.    Not only did Alabama lose, but Mississippi was creamed by TCU and the other SEC teams didn't overimpress, either.   That's another reason why you need a playoff. 

3.  Although four teams are better than two, I think it's an unsustainable number.   The exclusion of TCU, which I think would have clocked Florida State and maybe Alabama as well, is a particular case in point.   I think we will see eight teams and possibly more soon enough.

BTW, while I still think Rutgers made a mistake joining the Big 10, the decision looks a little better now than before.    They won their own bowl game, and the big conference powers (Ohio State, Michigan State, etc.) did pretty well, also.    The Big 10 "brand"--a sort of midway between the SEC and the Ivy League, good sports and good enough academics--thus looks better now than it did a few months ago.   I still think that big time college sports are headed for a fall and it would be better to distance one's self while you still can.  But if professors really mattered, they'd be football coaches.