Hi Anja,

I share some of the frustrations you write about here. When you say it's insulting to be told of the privileges we have as if this is new information, I agree. But I think it can actually be worse than insulting: it can be merely banal. I understand that people often forget or underplay this, and many of us may not have had our commitment to doing something with our "lottery earnings" tested as you have. But for me, since the circumstances of my life make it difficult for me to ever forget how privileged I am, being told about it is rather like being told what my name is. And I suspect I'm not all that unusual compared to others in that class. I don't think you and I are necessarily more aware than anyone else. So I sympathize, and I hope we'll soon start talking more about what we can do about our awareness of privilege and less about becoming aware of it in the first place.

I also could relate to what you said about needing some reason for optimism. However, I don't know that this class is the place to look for it. I'm sure people's commitments to working for change and justice do diminish over time. I've seen a few examples of this myself. But it surely cannot strengthen people's commitment to be told that it's almost inevitably going to go away anyway. At least, I don't think this approach would strengthen many people's commitment. Some may respond in a "reverse psychology" type of way, I guess, as if they are being dared to do something.

But as I said, I don't know if this class is the place to look for optimism because obviously Professor Moglen has experience-based reasons for his pessimism. And I wouldn't want him sugarcoating his view of reality for us, nor do I think he would. So you and I and others who feel the same might be better off searching in other sources for reasons for optimism, and perhaps use this class as (among other things) a reminder of what we're up against.

-- AnjaliBhat - 06 Feb 2009

• I for one was very glad you had at last decided to stop preventing yourself.

I have been told that I called Prof. Moglen a failure. That was certainly not my intention. I merely intended to highlight that it is not always clear that he lives up to the standard he sets for us.

• I'm a little surprised people had that response. I thought your line of questioning was entirely fairminded. Perhaps if you hadn't prefaced it by remarking that you might be about to commit academic suicide (which seemed to me a very extreme apprehension of external censorship) you would have shown less vulnerability and therefore received less aggressive criticism. Even people who do not know they are doing so often drive hard against positions that have been self-identified as risky.

If we were truly lawyers, Prof. Moglen said, we would not have a problem fighting the grading curve.

• Of course, my comment is meant to be ironic, because (with the exception of Messrs Lochore, Bruening, etc.--whose status is a little more ambiguous--you aren't lawyers yet, which is why we are working together.

I applied this logic to my impression that Prof. Moglen wants to change the trajectory of Columbia graduates, but that he still thinks 99 percent of them end up unhappily grasped by the claws of almighty law firms.

• Of course, that might be a more difficult problem for one person to solve than ending the use of the curve would be for 100 or so....

This, in my mind, rendered somewhat hypocritical the recurring statement that “I decide what I want to change, and then I figure out how to change it.”

• You do not think that I have any ironic sense of my self?

I was happy to hear that my impression was incorrect, and that Prof. Moglen thinks that a moment of change is approaching. I wish I had heard this sooner. Elaborating on Prof. Moglen’s metaphor, I believe that to establish credibility as a leader, a “good general” must show his troops that victory is within reach. In other words: We all need a carrot, lest we grow numb to the stick.

• Here I do think you are being a trifle unfair. My point was not that everyone in the room is ignorant of this truth, or even that anyone in the room was completely ignoring it. But the desire to vindicate individual identity sometimes leads some people to underestimate its importance, as other comments made in this wiki since we parted may perhaps tend to show.

Finally, the assumption that women care about what they eat because society wants them to be bulimic is offensive. After inviting discussion on the issue, Prof. Moglen ignored his own professed principle – whereby one should never merely seek to prove an idea wrong – by vehemently declaring that he was right.

• This, I think, is entirely just. I said at the outset that I would occasionally be found to be breaking the rules through negligence and hastiness in debate, and--as you say--this was certainly an instance. I thought you were being dogmatic, and I was regrettably dogmatic in response.

As is the case with much of what we discuss, there is more nuance in this issue. I, for one, care about what I eat because my mother is so obese she can no longer walk.

• But surely your concern about her is not primarily that she increases the public health care expenditures. Yet that was the point you made at the moment of speaking, and the difference between your private feeling and the public argument advanced might be fruitful to follow up.

• I am not intending to abrade your spirit, Anja, and I hope you will acquit me on further consideration of any such purpose. I understand, even if I do not entirely share, your view that my role is to lead you towards your intended future primarily by the force of general and enthusiastic encouragement that victory is nigh. Instead, you must permit me to take a slightly less optimistic view of the situation based on my own lengthy experience in this environment. Time has taught me that the initial strength of peoples' desire for meaningful practice and balanced lives is eroded from within as much as from without. Let us suppose--which may well be true for all I know to the contrary--that your commitment to your intended life path is the firmest of all commitments in the room, not excepting my own. Your grasp of the paradox involved in accepting fully that you are the product of intersecting social forces and contingencies, on the one hand, and also the captain of your fate and chooser of your destiny, on the other, may rise superior to everyone else's, including mine. In that case, everything I say and do to help others deal--first with encountering and later with accepting that paradox--productively in their own psychic and moral lives, will be wasted on you. That would be too bad, but it would be neither insulting nor harmful. And if, just if, our collective conversation turned out to play a role in strengthening even your already steely moral resolve, that would be well worth the sting of your criticism.

• Please have patience; we have only just met and begun our travels together. Six, let alone twelve, weeks from now, I think you will find yourself neither so frustrated nor confused. I hope you will also have found many more reasons not to be silent.

If we were truly lawyers, Prof. Moglen said, we would not have a problem fighting the grading curve. I applied this logic to my impression that Prof. Moglen wants to change the trajectory of Columbia graduates, but that he still thinks 99 percent of them end up unhappily grasped by the claws of almighty law firms. This, in my mind, rendered somewhat hypocritical the recurring statement that “I decide what I want to change, and then I figure out how to change it.” I was happy to hear that my impression was incorrect, and that Prof. Moglen thinks that a moment of change is approaching. I wish I had heard this sooner. Elaborating on Prof. Moglen’s metaphor, I believe that to establish credibility as a leader, a “good general” must show his troops that victory is within reach. In other words: We all need a carrot, lest we grow numb to the stick.

I also feel that I need to clarify my “So what?” response to the Arnold-induced realization that our lives are more affected by non-choices than by choices. I completely agree with Arnold on this point. What I meant by my admittedly vague two-word question was: Now how do we turn this realization into something useful and constructive? Prof. Moglen gave us an excellent answer: Let the awareness of our happenstance privilege nourish our commitment to change and justice, and let it reinforce our ability to resist the temptation of six-figure salaries. That was exactly what I wanted to hear.

The assumption, however, that we are unaware of the non-choices that have given us a life of privilege is offensive. I am sure that many of us have considered this issue prior to reading the Arnold piece. I grew up in Sweden, one of the world’s most egalitarian and prosperous societies, where all university students get equal stipends, health care is free and universal, and cabinet ministers use public transportation. The awareness of my own privilege has motivated every major choice I have made in life. I came to law school after spending two years in a war zone. My daily commute had me traversing open sewers; the cook at my house lost his daughter to fundamentalists who could not stand seeing a woman’s face on TV; and the Taliban killed six people in the changing room at my gym. I could not be more aware of my own privilege, and I know full well that I did nothing to earn it.

I also find offensive the assumption that law school is the first-ever challenge to our commitment to the public good. I am sure that many of us who are committed to pursue a career in public interest law have already tested that commitment. For the first months of my six years of non-profit work, my husband and I slept on an air mattress because our combined paychecks did not cover both rent and a bed. Unless law firms possess some magic of which I am unaware, I consider myself capable of sustaining my commitment even in the face of hardship.

Finally, the assumption that women care about what they eat because society wants them to be bulimic is offensive. After inviting discussion on the issue, Prof. Moglen ignored his own professed principle – whereby one should never merely seek to prove an idea wrong – by vehemently declaring that he was right. As is the case with much of what we discuss, there is more nuance in this issue. I, for one, care about what I eat because my mother is so obese she can no longer walk.

I may be wrong, but I think that Prof. Moglen is to some degree preaching to the choir, which makes his abrasiveness somewhat unnecessary. We are all in this class for a reason: We do not want to be “canned meat.” I am in this class because I had tears in my eyes when Prof. Moglen finished speaking at the 1L electives panel. I want to be a happy lawyer, I want to effect change. I did not expect that the process would involve being told that, no matter what I think about my own commitment to serving justice and the public good, I will end up as canned meat.

All of this said, let it be known that I really enjoy this class – because it makes me feel something (even if that feeling is mostly frustration with a sprinkling of confusion).

-- AnjaHavedal? - 06 Feb 2009

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