Thread by @elmunc

Lot of snark abt this from @NYMag Chua/Rubenfeld piece, but I'm gonna say it straight: this is @YaleLawSch's malignancy. I had 3 yrs of nauseous bafflement at the preening, scheming culture--the faux-chill battles for a rung on a supposed "natural hierarchy of achievement." /1

This is professional education--the *formation* of new generations of people as lawyers with access (due to the pedigree) to wide possibilities and deep responsibilities--and a prof's seemingly unashamed metaphor for it is ... a horse race. /2

My memory of YLS is of a theater with two performances. The one you'd think mattered--the one in front of the curtain, the classes and the seminars--was (I came very belatedly to see) just engaging calisthenics. The one that mattered was happening backstage and in the wings, /3

where the most driven (note: not the "naturally hierarchical best" but the most driven and the ones with the most heavily cultivated connections) rushed to open doors along dark, unmarked hallways in search of the most powerful occupants. /4

I had some excellent, rigorous intellectual experiences there, and was shown some new ways to think about the world by some very brilliant people. But this is just to say that I spent my time in front of the curtain, sensing furious activity backstage, /5

and noticing that so many of the actors around me were really only half there, distracted, as they were, by the more important world on the back side of the curtain. /6

To return to the prof in the NY Magazine piece: yes, YLS as Kentucky Derby--that's the problem. Imagine what the institution might be if so many of its faculty thought of entering students as having *crossed* a finish line, rather than lining up at one. /end