Firing untenured faculty is a shortsighted approach to managing an academic budget. It encroaches on an important principle of academic freedom, namely that a tenure decision should be based on the merit of the case, not the budget of the department.
Yeah, all you stupid dunderheads and your "real market economics" are screwing the First Amendment.
What is Prof. Fleischer's basis for this? Theory? Empiricism? Nope - personal anecdote.
But he gets it right, and oh so right:
Law professors, economists and other academics are often called to testify in front of Congress, and academic research is often used to shape legal policy. Academic views are respected precisely because they are free from economic pressures; academics are not beholden to clients.
Ivory tower obliviousness for the win!
But far from being a feckless academic, Fleischer has a real, practical, hard-hitting solution:
According to its Web site, Seton Hall Law School has five centers, seven clinics and five study abroad programs. I doubt all of these programs are profit centers. Perhaps in the age of austerity, the law school will offer fewer opportunities to travel to Zanzibar, take a safari, or study lakeside in Geneva. Better to kill off a few boondoggles than to fire the junior faculty.
Clinical legal education: a boondoggle. Junior faculty who publish fluff are important, people. Their right to publish offensively useless fluff must be protected at all costs. Now pay your tuition and leave us alone to bask in our six-figure prestige. MY CV IS TWENTY PAGES LONG AND PROVES I ADD VALUE TO THE HUMAN RACE.
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