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Class Bias in Higher Education 

Discussion of class bias in higher education, particularly legal education.
Post Frequency: 0.6/day Last Entry: July 19, 2010 at 14:40:00 Recent Entries: 169
By Jeffrey Harrison
Go to Class Bias in Higher Education, find other Law School blogs, or browse all law blogs.
Are Elites Anti Intellectual?
Posted on January 09, 2008Are elites anti-intellectual? I will admit that this view may be a bit of a reach and involves drawing a couple of perhaps unrelated ideas together. I do not think there is any serious debate that legal education is controlled by the privileged. And clearly there is no question that law professors view themselves as liberals...
No Misery Among the Elites
Posted on January 06, 2008A number of law school related blogs, including Moneylaw, have addressed the idea that law professors are miserable. This does not mean miserable people ? which a fair number may be ? but that law professors are unhappy. In typical idle talk fashion the idea that they are unhappy seems to have been hatched in a manner similar to office hall gossip...
More Class Confessions
Posted on December 31, 2007Dear Jeff;I can top anything anyone has listed so far. I was getting ready for the hiring convention. I did not own a suit and had not owned one for years. I can give you details about how that happens but it's not so important. I could afford one but just did not ever need one...
More Class Moment Readers' Email
Posted on December 26, 2007As you can see from the last post, I am publishing comments from readers about moments of class recognition. Here is another one: Dear Jeff: I can top those. I was 19 in 1974 and an undergraduate. I spotted this girl and we talked after class a few times...
Class Moments from Readers' Email
Posted on December 25, 20071. I was in 8th grade Algebra. The teacher was using an example that involved allocating a fixed amount of money to buy several items. In the course of it, she says, ?Now if you were buying good shoes, you would never go to Sid?s.? [Sid?s was the local discount shoe store...
1970 - 2005 -- Class Consciousness
Posted on December 19, 2007I am not surprised anymore about class differences but I am surprised by the lack of sensitivity to class differences especially among the privileged. One of my first real experiences with this goes back to being an undergraduate in the late 60s. Periodically there would be meetings of all sorts of leftish, anti-war types...
Just Wondering About None of the Above
Posted on December 13, 2007Over on Moneylaw I have posted my annual objection to multiple choice machine graded exams (MCMG) for law students. To me it is a sign of laziness. And, since it denies the students the opportunity to communicate that they know law is imprecise, fuzzy, and inconsistent, it is also demonstrates a disregard for students...
The Informal World of Non Elites
Posted on December 09, 2007A friend suggested to me that class bias is so powerful that it never really wears off. What he meant was that even if a non elite cracks through, somehow gets a law teaching job, and then tenure, many things remain the same. The clique of the elites is never open to the non elites...
Playing the "Fairness" Card and Rawls
Posted on November 28, 2007Recently, in a comment, I was accused of not being fair. It made me realize how specialized a sense of unfairness can be. I have no idea who wrote the comment and the identity is not important because I am sure a narrowly focused sense of fairness is something we all possess...
Answer from Harvard Professor
Posted on November 26, 2007Those of you who read the immediately preceding post know that I wrote and asked a Harvard Prof about an empirically verifiable statement made with respect to a candidate. The statement was that the candidate had 28 call backs within a few days of the recuiting convention...
Letter to a Harvard Reference
Posted on November 24, 2007Dear Professor . . . :I have not communicated about this until the recruiting effort in connection with [Doe] was completed because I did not want to interfere in the process. What follows is an effort to transcribe a telephone interview with you. The comments are what one expects these days except for the claim of 28 call backs within 3 days...
Moms, Dads, and Deans in the World of Elites
Posted on November 23, 2007I have been pretty critical of deans in my blogs and I may have been unfair. My sample is small. I have only worked closely enough with 8 deans to have any standing with respect to criticism. In that 8, I have seen only one dean who tempted to reshape the work ethic of the faculty...
Hiring Bias and Public Legal Education
Posted on November 15, 2007Elites tend to view themselves as ends rather than means to an end. This is especially the case when it comes to law teaching. Unless public legal education is viewed as a huge and ill-conceived method of redistributing income from lower and middle income groups to relatively higher income groups, its only purpose can be to enhance public welfare...
Not as Much as You Think
Posted on November 11, 2007In my previous post I asked the question ?Do Elites Think.? I asked facetiously knowing that they do think, at least some. The point I was making is that they are enamored of institutional authority -- Harvard is automatically better than Florida and the recommendation of a Harvard professor more reliable than a Florida professor...
Do Elites Think?
Posted on November 08, 2007Jake: Hi, do you want to talk about that issue some more? Jeff: Yes, right now I am trying to find some distinction between being content and being happy. Jake: As it turns out, I was just talking to some people at Harvard about that. Jeff: Why are you telling me they are from Harvard? (Long Pause) Jake: I am not sure what you mean...
The Fall Election: News for Law Students and Alums
Posted on November 02, 2007Each fall an election is held. It?s an unusual election in that it involves actual votes and then marketplace ?votes.? In both cases, the voters are law professors and the election is held to determine which people will become law professors.In the vast majority of instances the voters vote against their own students...
'Nuf Said
Posted on November 01, 2007Based on data provided to the faculty and my far from always accurate calculations, The University of Florida hiring committee interviewed 31 people in Washington. Here are their law schools:Harvard ? 8Yale -7 Columbia ? 4NYU - 2Stanford -2Chicago -2Vand...
And the Campus Visits Go To . . .
Posted on October 30, 2007First out of the box for a campus visit is -- do you want to guess? -- You got it. Princeton/Harvard. I don't want to be too quick to be negative. After all maybe this is a person with a story to tell. Overcoming barriers, a zillion dollars of student loans...
Dancing the Minuet
Posted on October 30, 2007Here is a post I put on Concurring Opinions during my one month guest stint. It lists what makes for an ideal law school and what does not. When I wrote it I did not think in terms of class bias implications. Then I thought it is actually all about class bias because to the extent a school is not like the ideal school it means there is a hubris often found among those with a sense of entitement...
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Enter your questionAlaska's new law states that any parent who causes domestic violence against the other parent or child is not allowed custody. Does Florida have that same law?
Boy, that's a tough one. You may have to resort to small spy cameras to cat...
Can auto insurance companies charge higher insurance rates to those car owners living in high crimes areas?
Unfortunately, when you purchase auto insurance you are participating in a share...
Do you get audited at 10,000 dollars in one transaction or 10,000 period?
You don't get audited, it is simply a reporting proceedure because of 9/11....
What school loans are dischargable with a Bankruptcy ?
I guess if you have taken federal loans probably stafford, I think that it is di...
What role does financial means determine which parent gains custody?
was(am) a single male that gained custody of my daughter when she was three. Thi...








