ORIGINALLY POSTED APRIL 28, 2004: These rumors just won't die...sigh. Worth posting again.
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It is inevitable that if one produces rankings and comments on the scholarly fortunes of different faculties that ad hominem attacks and speculations will abound. Yet even though my rankings of philosophy departments dominate the philosophy world, I've never encountered unprofessional behavior on a par with what my law school rankings--far less influential than U.S. News, to be sure, but perhaps more influential among the top students--have generated among law schools. In the annals of pettiness, the University of Michigan Law School (my alma mater, no less!) and Northwestern University School of Law may be in a class by themselves.
Regarding Michigan, I have pointed out, on various occasions, what everyone in the legal academy knows: namely, that Michigan lost its super elite status during the 1990s, that it went from being a clear "top five" law school in every respect, to competing with the top dozen (Penn, Virginia, Texas, Georgetown, Boalt, etc.). This is not even remotely controversial among insiders: Michigan's senior faculty was decimated over the last dozen years, though, as I've noted, they've done very well in recruiting younger scholars.
Given the banality of these observations, I was quite astonished when someone forwarded me a posting on a prelaw discussion site by someone claiming to be on the admissions staff at Michigan explaining that I had been "rejected" for a faculty position at Michigan as a way of explaining my reporting the facts about Michigan's faculty retention problems. [Edit: see Update, below.]
Yes, I kid you not: on a discussion site for prelaw students, someone claiming to be an admissions staffer at a reputable law school posted this smear. Wow!
The smear is not without its amusing aspects. For one, my wife would divorce me if I ever suggested we live in Ann Arbor, which is small, cold, and Midwestern (which aren't her three favorite attributes--or mine!--in a place to live). But more seriously, the fact that Michigan Law even interviewed me in 1992-93 (when I first sought teaching jobs) was both a surprise (they were already overloaded with law-and-philosophy faculty) and a blessing (it gave me instant credibility on the teaching market). Finally--and this is really the oddest part of this whole episode--the list of law schools that didn't offer me faculty positions during my career is quite a bit longer than the list of law schools that did--and it includes lots of schools about which, last time I looked, I've written positive things or which have fared quite well in my various law school rankings (for example: Chicago, Boalt, BU, NYU, USC, Hastings, and so on). (And Penn, which made me an offer several years ago, only came in 11th in last year's faculty quality survey, noticeably below their 7th-place ranking in US News. So I'm plainly doing a terrible job responding to the marketplace incentives properly!)
Now don't misunderstand me: I can certainly come up with things I didn't like about Michigan Law. The teaching, for example, when I was there was, overall, terrible. It was clear the faculty were, in general, not the least bit interested in the students. The Administration--I think particularly of one assistant dean, who I believe is still there--went out of its way to be bureaucratic and destructive, rather than constructive. But one thing I couldn't complain about is how the school treated me when I was on the teaching market: they did me a huge favor by even interviewing me, for which I'm still grateful. But whether I'm cranky or grateful has no bearing on the facts about Michigan Law's fortunes over the last decade.
Northwestern perhaps has more to complain about: while they're busy navigating a climb in U.S. News, they don't fare nearly as well on my law school ranking site, and I've also written here about their faculty retention problems. Put aside for a moment that it's all true (I've had both current and former Northwestern faculty write to confirm the accuracy of the posting about the faculty retention problems, for example). I've heard from several prospective law students that when they have asked about the faculty retention problems at the interviews that Northwestern requires for all law students, they are told--yes, you guessed it--that the school rejected me for a faculty position!
I'm not sure what Northwestern is looking for in prospective law students--other, that is, than high LSATs--but it appears they're counting on prospective students not understanding that an ad hominem response like this is unresponsive to a factual question: either Northwestern has a faculty retention problem, or it doesn't, after all. The evidence clearly suggests it does. Why not talk about what the school is doing to change that instead?
When I visited at Yale Law School during 1998-99, Northwestern invited me out to give a paper and "chat" about whether I might be interested in an appointment. There were three things that made this a prospect worth exploring: I like Chicago (despite its being cold), I like (and have learned an enormous amount from) Ronald Allen on the law faculty, and I was very interested in the work of several folks in the Philosophy Department at Northwestern (esp. John Deigh and Arthur Fine). An appointment with the Philosophy Department was essential for me, and while folks like Deigh and Fine were generous in their support, Northwestern has a substantial contingent of SPEPPies (members of the Society for Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy), and that was the deal breaker: the SPEPPies view me as their nemesis (someone who works on Continental philosophy, but thinks little of their "heroes"), and so Philosophy wouldn't cooperate, and that ended it as far as I was concerned. The law school at Northwestern was very welcoming; their Philosophy Department sunk the deal.
Happily, we've since recruited John Deigh to the Texas faculty, and as fate would have it, Arthur Fine left shortly thereafter, and the Northwestern Philosophy Department largely imploded (David Hull retired, Meredith and Michael Williams went to Johns Hopkins) (of course, the Law School has imploded to some extent too, as noted). Now, of course, there's no question where someone interested in philosophy would rather be.
I apologize for rehearsing these dreary and uninteresting facts, but when reputable law schools stoop to ad hominem smears, it seems worthwhile to make the actual history a matter of public record. One thing I've learned while blogging is that I am a "public figure," at least within a small universe. And when you're a public figure, even alleged professionals on the admissions staffs at heretofore reputable law schools will apparently stoop low to achieve their ends. A pathetic spectacle, but there it is.
UPDATE: Through a colleague, I learn that the Assistant Dean of Admissions of Michigan reports that, while they do monitor prelaw discussion sites, they have a strict rule about admissions staff not posting on them, and that everyone on her staff denies the posting in question. She also reports that they have had difficulty in the past with individuals posing as admissions staff posting on these sites.
I very much hope this is correct; I have every reason to accept as credible and sincere the Admissions Dean's statements, and I am certain that if anything improper transpired, it was without her knowledge. I do, needless to say, have some remaining doubts regarding the underlying facts about the staff's actual conduct. Obviously, a staff member who violated the rule about posting would not be keen to admit as much, especially after public attention has been drawn to it; and it is unfortunate that, despite monitoring the sites, the admissions office failed to contact the discussion site to get the "imposter's" smear of me removed.
I am also troubled because I've received orally and via e-mail similar reports over the last few years from students (sometimes mentioning admissions staff, sometimes mentioning faculty). Indeed, a prospective Michigan Law student wrote to me today to record the following "near verbatim" exchange he had with a member of the admissions staff at Michigan (and which is alarmingly close to the discussion site smear at issue):
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Prospective: "So what is your opinion of Brian Leiter's law school ranking system? He is somewhat ambivalent about Michigan's status as top school."
(Read: "Leiter doesn't echo US News' opinion of Michigan as a top school and I want to go to the best school possible. What gives??")
Admissions Officer: "Leiter has his own methodology, the merits of which can certainly be debated. For instance, he selects individuals for his survey based on his own evaluation of their body of work and reputation. It's also good to keep in mind that he sought a position at Michigan in the early 90's and was turned down."
Prospective: "Well that doesn't necessarily mean anything, does it? Tons of professors interview all over the place. Rejections are inevitable, no?"
Admissions Officer: "Oh, of course. It's just one more thing to consider, that's all."
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It is false that I "sought" a position at Michigan; Michigan asked to interview me (much to my surprise, as noted). Those who are unemployed on the academic job market generally do not decline interviews from distinguished academic institutions. And why is it "one more thing to consider"? How is it relevant, except as a smear? Why are members of the admissions staff volunteering this kind of information to impugn my motives and character?
Perhaps this, too, is an apocryphal story. The student who shared the information, who gave his name and his e-mail address, seemed credible; he reported this incident in the course of raising questions about my original posting on the subject. This student also took issue with whether my rankings were really free of "bias." Of course, I did not deny that I have biases, those I'm aware of (e.g., intellectual ones) and those I'm not. Although it's not true, as the admissions staffer allegedly claimed, that I selected evaluators for last year's survey based on my evaluation of their work (anyone who knows my views and looks at the list of evaluators could determine that in an instant), it is true I tried to choose productive and well-known evaluators, and that was a kind of bias at work.
(On a sidenote, anyone who has actually scrutinized my ranking site knows that Michigan has been greatly helped by the data I've collected on, e.g., national placement at elite firms, among various other areas. Apparently this entire petty display is brought on by the fact that Michigan ranks 8th, tied with Texas, in last year's survey of leading legal scholars--a result that only someone in Ann Arbor, I gather, could think shocking or worthy of disparaging through ad hominem smears.)
UPDATE: A couple of folks asked what prelaw discussion site was at issue. It was a site run by the Princeton Review, which, for a long period of time (including the time at issue, above), was not monitored by grown-ups. I gather it is a more civilized forum now that registration is required and the discussions have moderators.
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