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November 16, 2005
Yale Law Schul
It was, I think, impossible to be at the law school in the mid-1980s and not notice the large number of Jewish faculty members. Abe Goldstein, Joseph Goldstein, Robert Burt, Owen Fiss, Bob Cover, Paul Gewirtz, Perry Dane, Guido Calabresi, Micheal Graetz, Tony Kronman (I think; isn't he?); Harold Koh. (OK, just kidding about that last one).
By the same token, I don't remember thinking that there was a disproportionate percentage of Jews among my fellow students. Couldn't have been more than 65 percent. (OK, kidding about that too. In honesty, I meant what I said before the punchline: I was actually struck by how small the percentage of Jews was in my class, not how large.)
Did the large number of Jewish faculty members make Yale Law School "feel" Jewish to me? Decidedly not. In fact, something close to the opposite was true. It was Yale, for God's sake. Surrounded by all of that Collegiate Gothic architecture, the flying buttresses, the stained-glass windows, the wood-paneled halls, the portraits of serious-looking long-dead patricians, the law school seemed utterly un-Jewish to me. It felt to me--and I'm not saying this just for effect--that in some small way all of the Jews on the faculty didn't really belong there, that they'd sort of snuck in and were running the place until the real faculty got back.
As for Ethan's report that his non-Jewish classmates were "annoyed" by Yale Law School's "Jewishess," I'd be very interested to hear how they communicated that, and whether they reported being similarly "annoyed" by the non-Jewishness of the rest of the world around them.
Posted by Eric at November 16, 2005 4:37 PM
Comments
How I love that shit. Too many white males annoy me.
Posted by: rose at November 17, 2005 1:53 AM
"Yale Law Schul" -- excellent!!!
I'm a graduate of a non-first quartile state law school known at one time as not only a "feeder school" for professors to more prestigious schools. But also a hotbed for "Critical Legal Studies" -- that is, Marxism and the law.
It too had lots of Jewish faculty. Quite left wing, too. But not so for students -- either jewish or left-wing.
A small but vocal group of students explicitly expressed their dismay with the political views of the lefties.
And they were also openly quite critical of the fact that a large number of the faculty were Jews. (It so happened that the lefties on the faculty were the Jews -- vindicating McCarthy I guess.)
They were graduates, unlike me, of state schools and from cities that were decidedly not in the top third of zip codes for income. Or top 66% for that matter.
(And, by the way, these folks were also critical of the fact that over 55% of the law school student body was women. I on the other hand thoroughly enjoyed the disparity!!!)
In fact, as I recall, one of this group was the founder -- and sole member -- of the law school's Federalist Society Chapter. (No, I'm not suggesting Fed-Soc people are anti-semitic.)
Posted by: marc garber at November 17, 2005 10:23 AM
I attended Brandeis University for undergrad.
For those not already in-the-know, Brandeis was founded around 1950 as a Jewish-sponsored non-sectarian school. Until it became required as part of affirmative action-type laws, its applications specifically *didn't* ask about race or religion, as a counterpoint to the quotas of other Ivy Leagues.
At any rate, when I attended, the school was about 2/3rds Jewish. There *is* a very different feel being in the majority. And I can remember some Xian students complaining, for example, when Hillel put announcements of the Hannukah party into *all* mailboxes Hillel's assumption was that those uninterested could just throw the flyers out, but nonJews complained about the assumption of Jewishness and being made to feel invisible.
Very educational.
Posted by: Lis Riba at November 17, 2005 1:03 PM
You know, it was kind of like that at the Technion too.
Posted by: Simon Spero at November 17, 2005 3:49 PM
Oh, come on. Most of the time, I can't even tell whether or not someone is Jewish (without knowing his last name). And I'm Jewish. Is Jewishness really such a detectable trait?
Posted by: Clara at November 22, 2005 10:51 PM