Law Schools

Student Staff Resign After Duke Law School Faculty Try To Force Anti-Trans Article Into Journal

Pretty sure this student-run journal is supposed to be... student-run.

By  
on

UPDATE: The Law School sent over comment from the Faculty Board provided below.

Duke Law School Faculty have incited a turf war with the student staff at Law and Contemporary Problems, the school’s oldest law journal. At the heart of the dispute is the Faculty Board’s insistence that an upcoming “Sex in the Law” issue include an article by UK philosophy professor Kathleen Stock. As Stock has spent the last few years aggressively promoting herself as the professor willing to rubberstamp whatever anti-trans sentiment will get her a media interview, it’s not exactly a mystery how she intends to use the student journal as a vehicle.

Making this, I guess, more of a TERF war.

Because “trans exclusive radical feminist” is one name for Stock’s recent work. Another is “gender critical feminism.” But whatever it’s called, it’s a brand of warmed over marginalization packaged as “philosophy.” It’s mostly a quirk of the branch characterized as analytic philosophy, a strain of the discipline that spent the last 75 years or so building a “value neutral” framework that can justify the status quo as objective truth. Not every adherent to this brand of philosophy breaks bad, but a discipline capable of offering a crutch to someone interested in saying “things are as they are because they’re meant to be that way” probably needs a good dose of self-reflection.

A 2020 profile in the Times Higher Education offered exactly the sort of low key snark that we rely on the UK to provide:

While unpopular closer to home, Professor Stock’s views are seemingly striking a chord with a larger audience outside academia – with 24,000 accounts following her on Twitter. Last month her blog on the employment tribunal ruling against Maya Forstater, the tax expert who lost her job after claiming that transgender women could not change their biological sex, was liked by more than 3,300 people.

In other words, “while actual academics think she’s become next to useless, right-wing trolls seeking to piggyback off the credibility of an academic institution confirming their biases are quick to hype her work.” When a news outlet focusing on higher education describes your work as a blog post with 3300 upvotes that’s a roasting.

Sponsored

Bringing us back to the question of how any of this is happening at a student-run Duke Law School journal (CLARIFICATION: It’s worth noting — as explored in the NCAA analogy below — that this journal bills itself as having faculty editors… it just makes the students do all the work for no pay). Apparently the student editorial board voted overwhelmingly not to include this article but the Faculty Board is refusing to let the article move forward without it. We’ve been told 5 student editors have already resigned and at least 14 more are considering following.

Law journals get a lot of flack for low readership, but is the Faculty Board really that excited to score some of that sweet, sweet 3000-hit Substack audience?

This all got me thinking about the NCAA’s recent smackdown from the Supreme Court. Unlike other fields, legal scholarship prides itself on almost exclusively employing student-edited publications. An army of law students are entrusted with the publishing arm of legal academia in exchange for a résumé chit and a pat on the back. All this tireless work for no pay is justified with somewhat romantic rhetoric about putting the best students in a position to put their purposes into print.

But, it seems at Duke this trust in student leadership only goes so far.

UPDATE: Here’s what the Faculty has to say.

Sponsored

Like the broader institution of which we are a part, Law and Contemporary Problems is committed to the vigorous and open exchange of ideas. The journal publishes issues that engage with matters of contemporary legal importance and feature contributions by a range of scholars in different disciplines. The issue on Sex in Law was approved in Fall 2020 by both the faculty advisory board and the 2020-2021 student editorial board after extensive discussion. The current student board members have recently asked that one of the pieces in that issue be removed. We respect the concerns and commitments of the students who have chosen to resign, but what they have asked of us is inconsistent with the journal’s core scholarly mission.

Alas, this is more or less what was expected in a situation like this. Academic freedom is, of course, an important value, but it’s also excessively deployed as a shield for professors to opine and behave in ways that marginalize others. From the unfortunately extensive population of white professors demanding to use the n-word in class to the continued saga of Amy Wax’s tenure at Penn Law, academic freedom is always raised as the defense when professors take actions that students — especially marginalized students — see as hurtful attacks on them as members of the university community. A “vigorous and open exchange of ideas” is valuable only to the extent it improves the academic mission of improving the human condition. Is Trans skepticism within that field? It shouldn’t be, but here we are.

UPDATE: Now the Volokh Conspiracy is dragging this article. Or, at least that’s what they think they’re doing. Either Professor Adler has completely missed the point or is being deliberately obtuse. Rather than focus on the wisdom of a legal journal extending its good reputation to an author who has generated heavily critical letters from her colleagues, the article throws hundreds of words at “since the Faculty Board has the authority to do this then there’s no reason anyone should question it.” Which is… certainly a take.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

, , ,