Dean blasts elitism in law, legal ed, then resigns

The dean of the law school where I work recently made two remarkable posts on LinkedIn about what he called "myopic prestige-based foolishness" and the "legal profession's snobbery," and then announced his resignation.

At risk of burying the lead, I want to focus on the two posts. On that score, tighten your seat belt, because you might never have heard these words from me before: I agree with the dean.

Young people's socioeconomic prospects continue to turn in bleak data—this week, a record low in first-time home buyers—spurring growing, alarming, and not characteristically American skepticism of democracy, at least the capital-driven version. (I wrote recently about the fondness of young Bhutanese for their socially minded monarchy.) I wonder whether this century will at last see American voters hit rock bottom and do something about our broken Constitution.

Socioeconomic stagnation, or worse, downward social mobility, in American society, irrespective of individual merit, is becoming ever harder to conceal behind starry-eyed paeans to the supposed land of opportunity.

I've written before about my own career track and the not-a-meritocracy that America is and maybe always has been, fabled reputation notwithstanding. It's unusual, though, to hear a law school dean say anything critical of the socioeconomic status quo—much less speaking from personal perspective. Usually deans in public prefer to paint rosy pictures. And I get it: morosity is not conducive to opening the checkbooks of well-to-do benefactors or prospective students. 

Deans have their job, and I have mine. Mine just happens to trade in truth. If you catch a dean just as her or his light is being extinguished, you might catch a rare glimpse of truth even there.

It should be said, I like Dean Sam Panarella. I've always thought his heart is in the right place and that he prizes ideals over self-preservation and bean counting. The latter are the prevalent priorities in the well compensated ranks of higher-education administration. Maybe that's why he wasn't cut out for it. 

My main worry about Dean Panarella always was how long he could stand to beat his head against a wall of willful intransigence. That's no secret; I told him that in our first 1:1 meeting.

I am sad but understanding in reporting that we now know the answer: three years.

Here is Dean Panarella's first post of two days ago. This post might seem innocuous, by the way—it did to me—owing in part to its polite eloquence. So know that things are going to heat up a notch thereafter.

At the time I write this post, there is no negative reaction whatsoever showing under this LinkedIn post. Reactions and comments comprise nothing but heaps of praise and agreement, likes and applause.

But Dean Panarella must have heard some discontent from someone, and fast. Because here goes the second post, within a day.

"Snobbery," you say? Well, the first post did not actually use that word, preferring instead the more genteel "foolishness." Yet the genteel approach "struck a nerve." I welcome the plain language to call out elitism for what it is.

U.S. News recently ranked UMass Law 171 of those nearly 200 law schools. That's bad—inexcusable—for the only public law school in the commonwealth at age 16.

A significant part of UMass Law's inability to better its ranking is forgivable as a function of the elitism problem the dean wrote about. Though U.S. News shrank the proportional input of reputational scoring in its law school ranking methodology since years past, now 25%, it's still a heavy investment in elitist defense of the status quo. U.S. News reported UMass Law at a sad 1.6 of 5 in academic peer review, and an only somewhat better 2.5 of 5 among lawyers and judges.

In turning down the volume of reputation, U.S. News amped up the value of inputs justifiably important to law students, such as placement and bar pass. Placement remains indirectly dependent on reputation. That's the very "class ceiling" the dean decried. It has been notoriously difficult for UMass Law graduates, regardless of merit, even to score interviews in the white-shoe Boston legal market. U.S. News reported mediocre employment outcomes at UMass Law.

Even a seemingly straightforward statistic such as bar pass conceals a bias in favor of privilege. In my experience, and the law school has some research to back this up, the number one obstacle my UMass Law students face in preparing for the bar exam is not being able to afford time off to study. Multiply that obstacle by the relentless demands of career and family for nontraditional students. The problem is money, not merit.

All that said, I am not letting UMass Law and the commonwealth off the hook. The bottom-line problem at UMass Law is and always has been, simply, the bottom line.

A public law school with an access mission sounds great in a speech. Indeed, UMass Law exists in part to combat the very elitism that oppresses it. But to assume that a public law school can be simultaneously more affordable for students and less costly to run than a private counterpart—well, I might call that myopic foolishness.

A school with an access mission will have more nontraditional students than its conventional academic counterparts. An access school will face greater student needs to overcome the serious shortcomings of American K16 education. An access school will have more students unable to afford resources, such as study aids, textbooks, and tutoring, not to mention the opportunity costs of working for free in field placements and internships. The list goes on.

The consequence of these student needs is that the school must shoulder a heavier than usual burden: more financial aid, more library resources, more faculty and teaching assistants, just to start. More resources means more costs. So a public, access school must cost more to run than its conventional counterpart in a competitive private school or foundation-funded "flagship" public school. Cutting pricey hors d'oeuvres from receptions and leather furniture from the lobby is not going to make up that difference.

Massachusetts never reckoned with this reality in creating UMass Law. The Massachusetts model of public higher education does not see universities as a social investment. Rather, academic units such as the law school are expected to pay their own way, balancing tuition and fees with expenditures. 

Idealism doesn't make math go away. A law school cannot take in less than a counterpart, but spend more. Yet that was the calculation with which the commonwealth founded its public law school.

Dean Panarella announced his resignation today, effective at academic year's end. He will move on to be the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law. 

What job did he not get? We should call out the enforcers of that class ceiling.

Meanwhile, chalk up another win for the bean counters.

They are undefeated.

Lawsuit alleges excessive force against federal immigration detainees held near public law school

⚠ Warning: indecent language.

Latino detainees of the Bristol County House of Corrections, which is located just three-quarters of a mile from the University of Massachusetts Law School, sued the county sheriff and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alleging serious physical abuses.

Filed in April, the complaint, stating Bivens and § 1983 claims for excessive force, is available from the federal district court docket at Court Listener. The factual allegations detail incidents of violence and some not so flattering quotations of officers, such as: "Shut the fuck up. You bitches are a bunch of immigrants without papers. You have no rights."

Sheriff Hodgson shakes hands with former President Trump
at a White House event recognizing sheriffs in 2019.
(Official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian via Flickr.)

Named in the lawsuit is Bristol County, Mass., four-term "tough on crime" Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson. This lawsuit is not his first tangle with unsavory allegations.

A 2020 report by the office of Attorney General Maura Healey determined that authorities employed excessive force in violation of the civil rights of federal immigration detainees (press release). New Bedford, Mass., tort lawyer Betty I. Ussach has written letters to local media complaining of the high cost of defending Hodgson's style of criminal justice (EastBayRI, Dartmouth Week Today).

But in past years, Hodgson's name recognition has seemed to work a no-publicity-is-bad-publicity magic in his reelection bids. Hodgson faces a slate of challengers this year.

I wonder whether the geographic juxtaposition of the Bristol prison and the Immigration Clinic at the state's only public law school is not telling of state conflict-of-interest policy, which would complicate if not prohibit clinic litigation against state and local actors. 

Clinic director Professor Emerita Irene Scharf retired just one one month ago. She exited amid some turbulence over how and even whether the law school would take responsibility for existing clients. It remains to be seen what the clinic will look like under new management. Scharf and sociology and anthropology Professor Lisa Maya Knauer have labored diligently for decades on behalf of the immigrant Latino community in south coast Massachusetts. But university personnel at Dartmouth, Mass., far from the aegis of the "flagship campus" at Amherst, must tread lightly in politically sensitive matters, lest they jeopardize the very existence of the system's less favored locations.

The present lawsuit, Morocho v. Bristol County Sheriff's Office (D. Mass. filed Apr. 29, 2022), was filed by Washington, D.C.-based NGO Rights Behind Bars and signed by its Boston-based litigation director, attorney Oren Nimni. Nimni is a graduate of Northeastern Law and an adjunct professor at Suffolk Law. So let the record reflect that monied Boston private law schools can make grief for public officials, too.

UMass Dartmouth appoints 6 to 'Chancellor Professor,' first awarded high academic rank since 2003

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has appointed six faculty to the rank of "Chancellor Professor," effective today.  I'm honored and humbled to be among them.  These are the university's first promotions to chancellor professor since 2003.  The number of persons who may hold the high rank is limited to ten percent of the faculty, campus-wide.  The provost's office reported, "All have demonstrated excellence in the art and practice of teaching, a record of scholarship that contributes to the advancement of knowledge, and have made outstanding contributions to the University or to their profession."  From UMass Dartmouth News, here is something of the accomplishments of my colleagues:

John Buck

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Professor John R. Buck, who has received the prestigious Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award and the National Science Foundation CAREER award, is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, a Fulbright Scholar and a Senior Member of IEEE. His scholarship focuses on underwater acoustics, signal processing, animal bioacoustics and engineering pedagogy. Professor Buck received fifteen research grants from federal agencies. Many of his graduates have continued their research at prestigious universities and national laboratories. Professor Buck’s classes incorporate active and collaborative learning, making the students’ learning the central focus of the classroom. He was UMass Dartmouth’s inaugural winner of the Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching for outstanding development of curricular materials and innovative assessment of student learning. Professor Buck also received the IEEE Education Society’s Mac Van Valkenburg Award, and the Faculty Federation Leo M. Sullivan Teacher of the Year Award. Professor Buck founded and led several faculty mentoring programs in the Office of Faculty Development, as well as directly mentoring several junior faculty from across the campus.

Qinguo Fan

Bioengineering

Professor Qinguo Fan has made substantial leadership contributions to the College of Engineering overseeing the transformation of Textiles Department into its current form as Bioengineering. As Bioengineering chairperson, he led the development of the new undergraduate major in bioengineering, recruitment and mentoring of new faculty, major renovations to laboratories and formation of an industrial advisory board. Under his strong leadership, the BNG undergraduate program successfully completed its first ABET accreditation in Fall 2016, considered exceptional for a new program doing the ABET accreditation the first time. The Bioengineering department now offers, in addition to the Bioengineering major, a Bioengineering minor, the 4+1 BS/MS program and a Biomedical Engineering concentration. Several Bioengineering graduates have gone on to medical schools, research positions and work at medical device companies. Professor Fan’s research has primarily focused on structural color, blue light cured polymers, and conducting polymers during the last ten years. He is a co-inventor on one U.S. patent. Professor Fan is a member of the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists and the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering. Professional recognition includes receipt of the Highly Commended Award at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence for one of his research articles.

Sigal Gottlieb

Mathematics

Professor Gottlieb has demonstrated a deep passion for incorporating research into undergraduate education. She has adopted an exploratory, discovery-based approach by using “computing for intuition” as a critical tool to learning, and has worked to engage her undergraduate students in research in computational mathematics. Her advisees have gone to have successful careers at universities and research laboratories. Professor Gottlieb is known internationally as an expert in strong-stability-preserving time discretizations and other schemes for hyperbolic equations. As PI or co-PI, she has been responsible for securing well in excess of $3.5M to support her research. In recognition of her expertise and impact on the field, Professor Gottlieb was recently elected a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Professor Gottlieb’s most significant service has been her leadership of the Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research (CSCVR), which she helped form and served as director (2013-2017) and co-director (2017-present). In this capacity she has worked to support, facilitate, and promote the research activities of the scientific computing group and to mentor students and junior faculty of scientific computing in a supportive, broad, and deep interdisciplinary research environment.

Brian Howes

Estuarine & Ocean Sciences

Professor Howes played an integral role in the initial development of the marine science graduate program, an internationally recognized marine science and technology program. He has advised and funded graduate students who have gone on to pursue successful careers. Professor Howes has maintained a high level of scholarly productivity in his field, as well as produced numerous technical reports as part of the Massachusetts Estuaries Program (MEP) requirements. He has raised over $23M in extramural research funding through federal, state and municipal extramural grants and contracts. Professor Howes has also made significant contributions to his profession in the form of scientific advances, as well as practical applications that have had a major impact on coastal ecosystem health and water quality in the region.

 

Yuegang Zuo

Chemistry & Biochemistry

Professor Yuegang Zuo has a record of contributing to active learning and has sustained a record of graduating M.S. and Ph.D. students. He provides high quality mentorship resulting in graduate students winning external awards for their work. He has also worked with undergraduate students, who have won American Chemical Society awards. Professor Zuo has maintained a high level of scholarly publishing and is successful in attracting substantial extramural funding. He has contributed to the University and his profession serving on diverse departmental, college and university committees as well as the Faculty Senate. He has served his profession as a reviewer, editor, and meeting organizer and serves on the editorial board for seven journals and recently became the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Endocrinology Research.