Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Dean's Letter
Back in early December, I wrote a post on this blog about how I disagree with Harvard Law School's nondiscrimination-in-recruiting policy. One friend who read it confided in me that he secretly agreed with me, but we both knew that public dissemination of this opinion was not to be tolerated at the tolerant institution of HLS. After thinking about it for a month, I decided that maybe a letter to the editor of the school paper wasn't appropriate, but at least the Dean (in whose hands this policy rests) should know that there is a contingent of dissent on campus. So I wrote her an email, based largely on my previous blog post.
Yesterday I received her response:
Of course, I didn't expect to convince the dean to my way of thinking, but I did kind of hope for a more thoughtful response than this. Basically, her argument is: "I don't agree with you." She says that HLS shows "respect and support" for students by excluding discriminatory employers, but to me that shows disrespect and lack of support for those who want to work for such employers.Dear Matt -- Thanks for this thoughtful note; I appreciate your sending it to me. I'm afraid we do disagree about the law school's nondiscrimination policy. I think it's part of showing respect and support for our students that we will not treat discriminatory employers in the same way we do others. In general, if student Smith wants to work for, say, an anti-semitic employer, he can, but the law school should do nothing to help him or otherwise support the employer's hiring policies. In the special case of the military -- special because of the military's great importance to our country and because of the great honor involved in military service -- the school historically took special care to ensure that those who wanted to serve in the JAG corps had effective access to military recruiters through the Veterans Association. I continue to think that the best accommodation of competing interests and goals. But I recognize how hard a question this is, and I respect your opposite views. I hope that on this and all other questions, HLS will continue to be a place of unfettered and robust discussion and debate.
Her example of the hypothetical antisemitic employer is odd--I doubt that a truly hateful organization like the KKK or NeoNazis or whatever would attempt to send a recruiting representative to HLS. They wouldn't have enough hiring success to justify the expense. As far as I know, the military is the only organization affected by this policy.
And if there ever comes a time when the KKK can hire enough HLS grads to make it worthwhile to recruit on campus, I guess I think HLS should give them every opportunity to try, along with the evil law firms, because that will mean that there are enough of a certain kind of student at HLS to make it wrong for the administration to marginalize them. I can see how HLS wouldn't want to appear to be endorsing or connected with the KKK, but I don't think educational institutions--especially ones who trumpet the diversity of viewpoints among their studentbody--should be taking ideological stances and forcing their students to conform.
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