Law Commons^™

Neo-Orthodoxy In Academic Freedom, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This review essay analyzes two recent books that advance neo-orthodox theories of academic freedom: Matthew Finkin and Robert Post, For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom, and Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time. Both books develop principles articulated in the American Association of University Professors 1915 Declaration, which emphasize the role of faculty in advancing knowledge and the need to insulate professional evaluation of academic work from lay, political interference. This review essay defends the return to protection of the scholarly search for truth as the touchstone of academic freedom, offers critiques of the authors’ …

No Ordinary Success: The Boundaries Of School Reform, James Forman Jr.

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

How much can schools improve the life prospects of children growing up in poor neighborhoods? This question has divided the education community since at least the 1960s, when a group of researchers led by James Coleman attempted to quantify the extent to which segregation hurt black children. Coleman concluded that differences in family background had a greater impact on student achievement than did differences in school quality. Almost 40 years later, former New York Times education columnist Richard Rothstein revisited the question. In a series of lectures at Columbia University’s Teachers College that became the book Class and Schools (2004), …

Campus Violence: Understanding The Extraordinary Through The Ordinary, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Recent mass shootings on college campuses have focused many on the responsibilities of colleges and universities to prevent and respond to such violence. However, in statistical terms, this type of campus violence can thankfully be considered relatively extraordinary. In contrast, the only type of campus violence that is unfortunately common enough to be characterized as “ordinary” is peer sexual assault and similar forms of campus gender-based violence. Accordingly, this essay explores the scope and dynamics of both “ordinary” and “extraordinary” campus violence, discusses the law and “best practices” dealing with peer sexual violence victims’ rights and the due process rights …

Doctrinal Dilemma, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In response to Kimberly West-Faulcon, The River Runs Dry: When Title VI Trumps State Anti–Affirmative Action Laws, 157 U. PA. L. REV. 1075 (2009).

Professor Kimberly West-Faulcon has identified a tension between state anti-affirmative action laws and the continued enrollment of minority students in public universities, and the author argues the tension is not surprising, because the voter initiatives that led to those state anti-affirmative action laws were transparently motivated by white majoritarian desires to reduce minority student enrollment in public universities. He feels what is surprising, however, is Professor West-Faulcon’s suggestion that state anti-affirmative action laws can themselves …