All Posts Tagged With: "academia"
Destroying Disciplines
Eric Freyfogle is a law professor at the Univ. of Illinois. He teaches environmental law and land use and a smattering of other subjects. I have the good fortune, along with Brandon Ruiz, of having him as a professor this semester. He recently circulated an address he made to the law school’s Board of Visitors. I have pasted it below. I have also pasted my email response to his fantastic essay. His essay concerns whether academics suffer from hyper-specialization and whether the generalist and the grand synthesizer have died. We both agree that rigid departmental distinctions should be destroyed.
Freyfogle’s title aptly alludes to R.W. Emerson’s famous graduation speech entitled, “The American Scholar.” You must read Emerson’s address, if you have not already. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., father of the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., described Emerson’s address as America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence” from European thought.
The American Legal Scholar
Eric T. Freyfogle
Remarks for Board of Visitors Meeting
University of Illinois College of Law
April 21, 2006
I want to offer today some scattered comments on the state of the legal academy as
I see it, with particular reference to the plight of the law professor as legal scholar.
The situation, overall, is a familiar one. It is the best of times and the worst of times.
Times are good because support for legal scholarship is at an all time high. The scholarly
laborers are many; they are exceptionally able; they are putting in more hours than ever; and
their productivity is prodigious. Read more…