We love internecine warfare at law schools and in other academic settings. As the old saying goes -- our cursory Googling doesn't immediately generate the exact wording or source, so we'll paraphrase -- fights in academia are especially vicious, because the stakes are especially small.

As Hillary and Barack do battle in Virginia today, so too do administrators at William and Mary. From a tipster at William & Mary School of Law (interesting factoid: it's one of the oldest law schools in the country):

Today the William and Mary Board of Visitors decided not to renew William and Mary President Gene Nichol's contract. Nichols sent out a pretty amazing email to all students about his resignation, and Michael Powell, former FCC Chairman and Rector of W&M, sent a response. Needless to say, people are talking of nothing else today.

To make the story even better, the law school dean, Taylor Reveley, is now serving as President of W&M. Nichols is joining the law school staff, where his wife is also a professor.

Check out the messages -- Gene Nichol's defiant departure email, claiming he was ousted due to ideological reasons, and Michael Powell's steadfast denial that the non-renewal was based on ideology -- after the jump.

Updates: First, a W&M tipster advises:

William & Mary School of Law is actually THE oldest law school in America (not one of the oldest). See Davison M. Douglas, The Jeffersonian Vision of Legal Education, 51 J. Legal Educ. 185, 197 (2002) ("[I]n January 1780 William and Mary became the first college in America to offer a formal course of study in law.").

Second, another source notes that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is the Chancellor of the College of William & Mary. Perhaps the formidable SOC needs to descend on Williamsburg and restore some order down there.