Archive | September, 2007

Commenter Sonja: “as I said earlier, the duration of a Jewish state in Palestine before 1948 was a mere 60 years.” Me: “Sonja clearly never heard of the Hasmoneans, who ruled Judea for quite a while. I’d say not knowing about the Hasmoneans pretty disqualifies anyone as an expert in Jewish history.” Sonja: “A Jewish […]

UCLA law professor Steve Bainbridge recounts the following personal experience with the LA land use bureaucracy: My wife and I wanted to put an addition on our house here in the City of Los Angeles. Our general contractor told us that the first thing we had to do was get up-to-date zoning and property information […]

The Chemerinsky saga raises a broader question: Is it ever permissible for a university to refuse to hire an academic because of his political views? For reasons that Eugene Volokh elaborates here, schools should be much more hesitant to reject professors on political grounds than high-ranking administrators such as law school deans. I am tempted […]

We’re at the hospital, waiting for some test results. Doctors and nurses come in and out, monitors pulse and beep, the cuff inflates every fifteen minutes. It doesn’t look like Redheadlaw7 will deliver today, but Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” still seems appropriate. Here’s a taste: I know you have a little life in you […]

here. Don’t be confused, though, by this excerpt from a rather puzzling Harper’s blog post: But the academics who express surprise here really are displaying their ignorance of the career trajectory of Michael Drake. He came to prominence and climbed the ladder of the University of California system by being politically controversial. It’s the nature […]

Prof. Matory wrote an extremely tendentious piece for the Harvard Crimson complaining about alleged suppression of anti-Israel viewpoints. Here are the challenges: (1) Professor Matory writes: “Israel has now withdrawn from Gaza, an action that [former Harvard President Larry] Summers slammed Harvard and MIT professors as anti-Semitic for even contemplating.” Prof. Matory, exactly when, where, […]

According to the L.A. Times, UC Irvine is working on a possible deal to rehire liberal legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as its dean. Meanwhile, Chemerinsky himself had an op ed in yesterday’s LA Times telling his side of the story, and reaffirming his claim that UCI Chancellor Michael Drake told him that the original offer […]

Today’s “Corrections” page in the New York Times contains the following: Correction Published: September 15, 2007 An article last Saturday about Dartmouth College’s governance structure incorrectly described a Web site congratulating Todd J. Zywicki, a trustee, for meeting with members of the Phrygians, a secret society, and discussing possible actions against the college administration. It […]

Over at Slate, William Saletan takes a critical look at recent studies that purport to show liberals are smarter than conservatives.

Virginia has become the latest state to adopt the rule that landowners can be liable when trees on their property cause damage to neighboring properties. In the past, most states used the “Massachusetts rule,” which held that if a tree grew on your property but the branches hung into your neighbor’s yard, that neighbor could […]

The Washington Post ombudsman, Deborah Howell, investigates the reasons the Post and other papers refused to run two recent installments of Berke Breathed’s “Opus” comic strip. The purported justification was that the strips could be offensive to Muslims. Yet as Howell discovers, it does not seem that Muslims were offended. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the […]

This week’s “Science Journal” column in the W$J (link for subscribers) reports on the interesting and provocative research of John Ioannidis, who argues that the results of most published scientific studies are wrong. Dr. Ioannidis is an epidemiologist who studies research methods at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece and Tufts University […]

Here’s an interesting preview of Alan Greenspan’s memoirs:   Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits.  In the 500-page book, “The Age of Turbulence: […]

An article in the New York Times about Rand and Atlas Shrugged that is notable for the absence of the expected condescending sneering. Rand didn’t much influence my political philosophy, which was about the same before I read her stuff as it is now, but I do give her credit for two things. First, she […]

I’ve argued before that a university may reasonably — and without violating the First Amendment or academic freedom principles — (1) prefer to hire a Dean or a Chancellor who isn’t too politically controversial, and (2) insist that these employees (who do a lot of fundraising and are the public face of the university) avoid […]