December 8, 2006

A Yale docudrama.

By David Lat. A hilarious and devastating depiction, allegedly "fictionalized" and allegedly "loosely based on what we've heard," of how it came to pass that this year's Yale Law School Award of Merit is not going to Samuel Alito.

UPDATE: Lat has more on Koh and Greenhouse.

2 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

Which opinions are you especially impressed by? I haven't particularly noticed at this point.

Richard Dolan said...

Lat's fictionalized account was believable and funny -- the Dean treating his most loyal (and presumably successful) alumni like nitwits, and their apparent acquiescence in his doing so. Of course, those are also the same alums the Dean will turn to for the next mega-bucks endowment campaign. Way to go, Harold.

Despite its theatre-of-the-absurd quality, Lat's docudrama will continue to capture the reality at elite universities until Koh-like antics begin to impact on fundraising. I've heard the guys who run FIRE say that their most effective weapon in combating the screwball leftiness that passes for conventional wisdom on campus is an op-ed in the WSJ, because it gets the immediate attention of the university fundraisers. Evidently the alums at YLS have a way to go before enough of them get sufficiently fed up to express their views when the fundraisers come a-calling.