Conservative White Dude Named Dean at Harvard Law; Embittered Lefties Kvetch [Updated]
[guest post by JVW]
Harvard Law School, endowed initially by money from a slaveholder, today announced that Professor John Manning, a double alumnus of Harvard, will become the new Dean of the Law School effective July 1. Mr. Manning replaces the outgoing Dean Martha Minnow, whose tenure was marked by the modern cornucopia of race issues that infest campuses these days, and Ms. Minnow’s reaction was typically one of subservience to whatever demands the grievance industry happened to issue on any given day. Patterico covered this predilection a couple of years ago, and Dana reminded us that Harvard Law is home to a great number of snowflakes and crybullies. Mr. Manning, on the other hand, has conservative credentials, having clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia as well as for the late Judge Robert Bork. He also served in the George W. Bush administration in the Office of Legal Council and the Office of the Solicitor General.
So naturally, Mr. Manning’s appointment finds lefties in a state somewhere between embitterment and apoplexy. Over at Above the Law, Elie Mystal is, well, mystified that this job wasn’t treated as an affirmative action plum:
In related news, Manning was opposed by pretty much every legal “affinity” group you can think of on campus. If HLS admitted Martian law students, the Martians would have opposed John Manning. The choice of the non-white males at Harvard Law was professor David Wilkins. Wilkins’s scholarship focuses on the legal profession and legal ethics. THAT SEEMS KIND OF IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW. [All-caps repeated from original.]
But hey, score one for the white guys. We know things are tough for them right now, what with running all three branches of the government and all.
That’s right, folks. When white guys are in power in government, law schools have some sort of sacred obligation to balance that by appointing women and minorities to top positions. To bolster his argument that women and minorities are disappointed with the appointment of Mr. Manning, Mr. Mystal goes to that most authoritative of sources, Twitter:
Usually, when a new dean gets named at a prestigious law school, there are tons of well wishers commending the choice. Manning is no different. But for the past couple hours, I’ve been searching “John Manning” on Twitter, and in my unscientific scanning, I really haven’t seen non-white men taking to Twitter to congratulate the new dean. [. . .]
I know how the internet works, as soon as I publish this, conservatives are going to go find some women who support Manning, even if they have to create them like Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science. But if you look at social media (and, you know, my inbox of disappointed HLS grads who are women or of color) as of this writing, you’d think that Manning is here to serve only one segment of the HLS community. [Emphasis repeated from original.]
Stop the presses: left-wing Harvard Law grads are emailing a left-wing law blogger to express dismay at the hiring of a conservative dean! Who would have expected that? Left unsaid by Mr. Mystal is whether the appointment of a woman or minority would have led white males at Harvard Law to believe that their community would not be served, but I’m sure Mr. Mystal doesn’t waste one neuron of his brainpower pondering that question. But since he hasn’t yet exhausted his wellspring of bitchy snark, Mr. Mystal lets loose with a final observation:
To the extent that HLS was looking for a consensus choice among its diverse constituencies, the Manning rollout looks pretty pathetic. If all the white guys are grinning like they hit the Keno in Watertown, and but you struggle to find women or people of color to even send out a nice Tweet, your choice is perhaps more polarizing than you and all your white boy friends anticipated.
I guess white guys who went to Harvard Law School were due for a victory. The world can be so very very hard on them.
“Provocative” and “edgy” bloggers like Elie Mystal delight in caustically referring to their own subgroup as “white boys” in the belief that it buys them credibility with the various grievance groups from whom they long for acceptance. If you stop to think about it, white lefty self-loathing is at its very core simply sad and pathetic, though I suppose it’s all the rage among progressives in these mindless days.
I’m loath to have to respectfully suggest this to Elie Mystal and all the HLS grads who are filling his inbox with despairing messages, but perhaps Harvard Law chose Mr. Manning precisely because even they have grown tired of the whining theatrics of grievance-obsessed law students, and they no longer want a leader who indulges their every whim and fancy. I don’t follow these things, but a commenter on the Harvard Crimson article suggests that the perception of Harvard in the legal world has taken a hit over the past few years, so perhaps Mr. Manning was brought in to put an end to the grandstanding and moral preening that has infected every level of academia throughout the past decade and to restore a robust and intellectually-stimulating education in legal matters. Wouldn’t that be a wonder of wonders? You won’t find me saying this often, but rah Harvard.
[Cross-posted at You Know Where.]
UPDATE: It appears that I was wrong about Elie Mystal. I had been led to believe that he was a white guy, but it would seem pretty likely that he is instead black, and not in a Rachel Dolezal wishful-thinking sort of way. My mistake in making the assumption. So instead of his crack at “white boys” being self-loathing, it’s just run-of-the-mill bigoted. Glad to clear that up. I also note that I failed to provide a link to his post, but since I now know what a jerk he is I think I’ll go ahead and leave it out.
– JVW