A law prof responds to students who anonymously complained about #blacklivesmatter tee

[quote=“Wanderfound, post:174, topic:81178”]
Although a humanities dissertation may require a somewhat less extreme workload than a scientific research thesis,[/quote]
I doubt that. I remember being a little embarrassed, sitting in the graduate education office waiting room ready to turn in my little dissertation final draft, surrounded by humanities students with their wheelbarrows full of thesis.

and I suspect that a high-profile celebrity writing about his own career may have not been held to as rigorous a standard as a normal candidate.

There are doctorates and there are doctorates. Cosby’s was an EdD, which can be a perfectly respectable degree for what it is but it is not comparable to a PhD.

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The black and white simplified view of who deserves respect is what I’ve been saying I’m opposed to. Respect for people in my perspective is the summation of various factors and nuances. I acknowledge that Cosby may have put hard work into his doctorate, though I don’t have any knowledge of how rigorous the program was, but I’ll reserve my respect for people who have earned it. Again, we may have differing personal definitions of respect, so our apparent disagreement may be a miscommunication.

Probably just a difference in wording then.

The prof who wrote the letter. I’m wondering what percentage of people who know about it imagined the author as a man.

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Beneficial to the university, beneficial to the celebrity, not so beneficial to the academics whose credibility is diluted.

But, yeah, they are occasionally handed to worthy recipients.

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Yep. I’m a lawyer in Canada, where in some levels of court we are still expected to address the judge as “my lord” or “my lady”. If you fail to do so, the judge might led it slide… or the judge might ream you out for failing to show proper respect to the court. And even if you don’t care about getting reamed out, pissing off the judge is not a good start to obtaining the best results for your cilent.

As a lawyer, you have an ethical duty to try to represent your client’s interest (balanced against some other duties, like not lying to the court). That’s what you are there for. You are not there to use your client’s day in court as an excuse to take some principled stand against titles, just because you think they are bullshit. A lawyer who decides they will ignore titles “in all situations” will not be a lawyer very long, and it’s entirely appropriate for law students to learn that.

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I don’t know… I find that it’s really hard to view cosby in the same way I did prior to all of this.

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Actually, I imagined a younger black woman, FWIW… Thanks for the link!

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Well, I didn’t view him as a serial rapist predator before.

Me neither, obviously. Nor anyone else. Except the women who knew.

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I assumed the professor was a woman when I was reading it, but I’m not sure why–especially since I am just as likely to be guilty of the default-male mistake as anyone. Maybe because I expect that students would be less willing to give a male professor crap? Did not expect a white person, though!

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And I thought it was teller. Anymore guesses?

Truth. They don’t.

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I imagined someone closely resembling Cornel West:

That said, I can’t see Dr. West himself ever, ever wearing a T-shirt.

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You too, huh?

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