We had n’t help but smile when we saw Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken announce the university’s new tenancy- record doctor, Garrett West. A former laws secretary for Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, Judge Thomas Griffith of the D. C. Circuit, and Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain of the Ninth Circuit, West is … a traditional?
Gerken describes Garrett’s inclusion as” fully exciting” and “delighted” with her. She may have struggled to read those words.
On the one hand, it is encouraging to see that the opportunities on school are changing, and that operational pole-climbers like Gerken, who is aiming for a campaign from law school dean to Yale president, then feel the need to show they care about ideological variety.
For Gerken, the shift comes in the wake of three centuries of personal- inflicted scars. Before the events of October 7, Gerken was conducting a master’s degree clinic on what occurs when elite universities create an oppressive intellectual monoculture. A law student’s career should be heavily impacted by the specter of Yale Law School administrators ‘ demands that they publicly apologize for using the term” trap house” and describe a law student’s membership in the Federalist Society as” triggering” for his classmates. In violation of the law college’s code of conduct, students should also be portrayed shouting down a section on free talk without facing any kind of punishment.
West’s arrival in New Haven is encouraging, but Yale Law School still has a long way to proceed. There are other signs, nevertheless, that the opportunities on school are changing for the better.
On Thursday, Stanford University announced that Jonathan Levin would be its new leader. Levin, who has over the past few years served as the chairman of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, is a highly accomplished academic who has made a name for himself in the field of economy. On that front, for one thing, he is a departure from executives in the style of previous Harvard leader Claudine Gay.
Lastly, Columbia University is looking into the students who took part past month in a criminal meeting. Its president Minouche Shafik did speak later this month on Capitol Hill. The school is instituting administrative action against those who do not engage with the investigation, according to a spokesperson for the school, while the pupils are scheming among themselves about how to sabotage that investigation.
The sensible, sober, and reasonable among us—parents, graduates, students, and donors—should never despair. This effort to reclaim sobriety on American university campuses has skimmer of trust.
