The Feldman op-ed reminds me of a warning I give my law students.
I start by admitting that I hated law school. If the student is struggling, I’ll add that I once told a friend that if I ever try to teach law school, “please shoot me in the head.” There was an extra word there.
I tell them that I hated law school because it rewards, hand over fist, a very specific kind of intelligence: The ability to answer, on-the-fly and on-the-spot, to an abstract hypothetical that’s divorced from reality — without reference to notes or the ability to reflect.
This isn’t just cold-calling or Socratic method. It is also exams. The highest compliment you can pay someone in law schools is “Oh my God, they are so smart” — with the “smart” referring to that intelligence.
The problem, I explain, is that *the vast majority* of actual legal practice has nothing to do with that kind of intelligence. If you are not an appellate lawyer who argues in court, your ability to orally cold answer random hypos thrown your way is... just not that important.
A lawyer deals with people at the most difficult times in their life. They’re accused of a crime or other wrongdoing. Their business has failed. Someone else or their business has hurt them. Successfully helping someone through a crisis like this of course involves intelligence.
But it also requires empathy, strategy, persuasion, the ability to work with people who disagree with you, and loads and loads and loads of communication skills. And hustle. And boats of hard work.
At this point, the student has typically heard one or more attributes that they clearly have. They lighten up somewhat.
I then tell them that they need to immediately figure out how to enroll in a clinic.
Then I give them the news that jobs in the public interest are harder to get. But they are out there! And I will try to help them.
And there is always the plaintiffs’ bar, where you can do real good and also make money if you need it.
Finally, if they are good eggs I tell them they should really think about running for office.
And then I’m late for something and have to go. And that’s it.
P.S. I feel it worth clarifying that all of these other skills are categorically forms of intelligence, forms that are almost inarguably more important in real life than the ability to verbally spar with someone.
People get gas, water, and electricity in their home because they need heat, water, and lights to survive. ICE takes advantage of those basic needs to find and deport people.
ICE gets this data from Thomson Reuters.
They get it from Equifax.
Equifax gets it from the National Consumer Telecom Utilities Exchange.
Question is, is NCTUE data going to ICE?
If so 171 million people have been sold out to ICE. And they have no idea.
The first time I heard the word Latinx I was like “wait, what did you call me? Yeah, no, whatever that is I am not that.”
But then they explained it to me. And I came around. So, here’s a few thoughts why I use it myself and for the people I feel a part of.
I call myself Latinx for the same reason I *don’t* call my wife "Mrs. Alvaro M. Bedoya”: women and non-binary people exist and deserve the same respect I do.
Also, I don't want to call people of Latin American descent a term that erases most people of Latin American descent.
“It doesn’t respect the rules of the Spanish language.”
I’d take this seriously if I wasn’t called Al-VAH-ro daily, if we didn’t cross the border to “MeCKSico,” or if there was literally more than one (1) show on TV where supposed Spanish-speakers actually spoke Spanish.
1/ Miles Taylor is no resistance hero. He was an active facilitator of the separations of thousands of boys and girls from their parents who is now whitewashing his own reputation. nytimes.com/2020/10/28/us/…
2/ Miles Taylor propagated the myth that the moms and dads arriving at the border were not in fact parents.
Don't take my word for it. Here's the stories he solicited for Secretary Nielsen to use for this, and a link to his email soliciting them. documentcloud.org/documents/6881…
3/ When the full horror of family separations began to emerge, Miles Taylor did not denounce them. Instead, he sent Kirstjen Nielsen talking points to argue that the administration was actually *protecting* children.
2/ Here in April 2018 is Miles Taylor asking Katie Waldman (now Miller) for cases to help Secretary Nielsen propagate the fiction that the families showing up at the border were actually fake.
3/ Here’s her reply. Note the language around “family units” and “Honduran male adults.”
You cannot use the sentence “elections have consequences” in a post-2016 op-ed supporting a SCOTUS nominee and spend all of one sentence discussing Merrick Garland.
For a constitutional scholar to fail to appreciate that we’re in the middle of a republic-defining authoritarian power grab - Trump this very week said he would not accept the results of this election! - to blithely support your friend for the highest court in the land is bizarre
The essence of the op-ed is “my friend is very very smart, and therefore deserves to be on the court.”
As Bharat notes, this is endemic of a much broader problem in elite academia where raw intellect is more important than any other attribute.