Monthly Archives: February 2009

Updates on Sex/Race Bias Suit Against UF Law

Some updates to my previous post, UF Law Professor Files Sex/Race Discrimination Lawsuit:

  • Paul Caron has the most extensive updates, including a link to a public email from Florida Dean Bob Jerry, which says, among other things,

    At this time, I am at liberty to say that the allegations of discrimination in this case are unfounded. We will be responding vigorously to this complaint, and we will provide a copy of our response when we do. There are important facts with bearing on this case that will come out when we submit our response.

  • Earlier, in Former Florida Law Prof Comments on Racial and Sexual Discrimination Lawsuit Against School and Dean Prof. Caron wrote, “Ms. Russell-Brown has sent me the following clarification:”

    I just wanted to clarify one point for your blog that was not covered by the National Law Journal article, but which is addressed in my complaint.

    I went on leave from the UF College of Law in August 2004, in order to meet the 2-year residency requirement for a DPhil in public international law at the University of Oxford (UK). It was while I was overseas that I felt more comfortable, as a “tenure-accruing” faculty member, speaking up about some of the statements and/or comments that I was hearing. I returned from leave back to Gainesville in January 2007, which is when I began to experience the difficulties resulting in my departure by the end of that year, December 31, 2007.

    However, while I was on leave and at Oxford for my doctoral studies, from August 2004 until December 2006, my “tenure clock” stopped, along with my publication obligation, and was “re-started” when I returned to academic service at the UF College of Law in January 2007. Consequently, my complaint does not allege that I was “passed over” for tenure consideration, in the sense of being denied tenure, but rather that I was not allowed to continue in my “tenure-accruing” position starting from January 2007, until the end of my “tenure probationary period” in 2009-2010 – that my “tenure clock” was unlawfully stopped on December 31, 2007, in retaliation for my disclosures, and I was not allowed to be considered for tenure in 2009-2010, as UF faculty regulations provide.

Other updates of note:

Posted in Law School, Law: Everything Else | 2 Comments

It’s “Freedom to Marry Week”

I've just learned that someone has proclaimed this Freedom to Marry Week:

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Our kids will look back on this the way we look at the First Civil Rights Movement.

Posted in Law: Con Law: Marriage | Comments Off on It’s “Freedom to Marry Week”

Style, Check. Now As to the Substance….

Mark Nickolas' Blog: Obama Press Conference Answers Three Grade-Levels Higher Than Bush's First.

I copied each full transcript into separate Word documents. After doing that, I deleted the introductions by both men (since those are largely or fully scripted) and then deleted all reporter questions from the transcripts. What you have left are simply the answers that each president offered, off-the-cuff and unscripted, to all questions.

Then I ran Word's readability tool.

Guess what?

Bush's answers were spoken at 7th grade level. Obama's at a 10th grade level.

Yes, he speaks very well, and shows a command of the issues.

But no, (some of) those policies do leave something to be desired. Take, for example, this one: Geithner’s Plan: Bail out the Banks, Keep the same people in charge and let them do what they want.

Posted in Politics: US | 2 Comments

Cambridge University — the Unauthorised History

Ross Anderson, Cambridge University – the Unauthorised History

Cambridge University — the Unauthorised History

Cambridge University is celebrating its 800th anniversary in 2009. The official history tells the tale of the buildings; but what about the ideas?

Down through the years, Oxford has produced many powerful men and Cambridge many iconoclasts – scientists, philosophers and revolutionaries. The polarisation is by no means total: Oxford's alumni include the reformer John Wyclif and the father of economics Adam Smith, while ours include the Prime Minister Charles Grey, who abolished slavery and passed the Great Reform Bill. But we've long produced more of the rebels; way back in the Civil War, for example, we were parliamentarian while Oxford was royalist. Why should this be?

I can't find anyone else trying to tell the tale, so I'll try. This web page explains how disruption has been in our DNA from the very beginning.

I spent two very happy years at Cambridge. But it seemed more middle and upper class than iconoclast. Still, who can resist an account that proclaims,

Just as fire regenerates the forest, so a great university regenerates human culture – our view of the world and our understanding of it. We incinerate the rubbish. And Cambridge has long been the hottest flamethrower; we're the most creatively destructive institution in all of human history.

Posted in UK | 4 Comments

NYT Slips on Onion Peel

In a sign of future media convergence, t seems that this article from the Onion accidentally appeared in the New York Times under the headline, Trying to Live on 500K in New York City.

It seems that to be a man in New York, at least if you are a banker (is possible that the first letter might be a misprint?), requires a summer home, expensive holidays, a nanny, personal trainer, armed chauffeur, and so on. Riding the train would make them feel so unmanly. And ladies must have new and expensive frocks for each of their charity balls.

As with many of the best Onion productions, ripped from context one starts to believe it might be real, but the writer mercifully lets us in on the joke at the end, advising that even a mere frozen hot chocolate from the right supplier costs $8.50. “Frozen hot chocolate” — there's a giveaway.

[I wrote this on Sunday, but somehow it didn't get posted.]

Posted in The Media | 2 Comments

Lost Cause Dept.

A noble effort by Paul Ohm at Freedom to Tinker, Being Acquitted Versus Being Searched (YANAL):

With this post, I'm launching a new, (very) occasional series I'm calling YANAL, for “You Are Not A Lawyer.” In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system).

Funnily enough, that's how I got my start as an Internet lawyer. Back in the early '90s there were a lot of software engineers writing a great deal of nonsense about the US Constitution on USENET. When they used these mistaken priors to (mis)explain the law relating to the Clipper Chip, I decided to write a short 10-12 page article on the regulation of cryptography, just to set the record straight.

One hundred and sixty pages (and one case of carpal tunnel) later, I had an article.

Good luck, Paul, you'll need it!

Posted in Blogs | 1 Comment