Bigoted pseudo-geniuses
I saw this post over at BlackProf about a rather brilliant law professor who posted an outline from his property class online while he was a student. Problem: the outline contained racially offensive shorthand. As you can see at the bottom of the post, I left the following comment, which still, a little time later, sums up my feelings on the matter:
That's disgusting. How does someone like this end up being allowed to teach at places like Harvard and Stanford? It doesn't matter how smart he is: if someone is going to be so blase about using such slurs (he didn't even apologize!), then they aren't smart enough to realize what kind of effect that language can have on actual people, and they don't deserve the chance to have any kind of effect on the "next generation" (i.e. the students at whatever law school is so callous and hungry for researchers as to hire him).I do want to note, however, that I don't think the Yale Law Journal ought to reject his article. I've noted before that it's ridiculous that law reviews put any weight whatsoever on who the author of the article is instead of paying attention entirely to the content. Arguing here that Camara should be punished for his views with a ban on publishing would be hypocritical. And wrong.
