Friday, February 08, 2008
Stakeholding and More
As Dean, I have realized that one of the most difficult aspects of leadership is persuading people they have a common cause. I have tried to cultivate a sense of stakeholding: the feeling that causes people to invest their time, money, and energy into an idea or an institution, abstractions and entities larger than themselves. I have enjoyed modest success. Indeed, some of the people who have been most generous, especially of their time, which is harder to give than money, had not previously had the most direct relationship to the Law School. The greatest gratification is when they in turn persuade others of the value of the vision we have for positive change – for the contributions that can be made by our students and our alumni, and by organized activities that create public life.
Yet as much of a challenge as it has been to generate a sense of stakeholding, for the sentiments cannot be instilled by command nor can they be readily faked and a place that trains attorneys inspires less affection perhaps than some other sites of memory, it is even more of a challenge to generate a sense of shared goals. Many of us believe in the programs with which we are associated, the students whom we have trained, the teachers by whom we have been trained, and so on, without connecting our experiences to those of others in a meaningful manner. The notion that our success depends on the success of others, and that it will be our failure if they fail, is referred to in rhetoric only rarely, and put into practice even less. It matters not that it is true: certainly, a Dean recognizes as much, for a Dean is identified with the entirety of the operation over which he nominally presides, and it would not do to point out the accomplishments of a single aspect, especially if it were to the neglect of everything else.
Our Law School, like our metropolitan area, will flourish only if all of us work together.
Outlaws and Stonewall Bar
Last night, I personally hosted a reception for Outlaws and the Stonewall Bar Association, our LGBT student group and the local predominantly LGBT voluntary bar association. I did so not only because I believe in engaging with students and cultivating the bench and the bar, but also due to my belief that among the remaining civil rights issues our nation faces is legalized discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation. While we have much more than we may realize to do, and I embrace the challenge, with respect to race, gender, disability, and religion, among other sources of potential division, we at least have forged a consensus, fragile though it may be, that legal discrimination on the basis of these classifications is wrong – more than wrong as a technical matter, violative of a shared sense of moral norms. Other forms of legal discrimination have become so inconsequential that they barely attract notice: for example, there was a time and there are still cultures that embrace explicit birth order discrimination. Yet with respect to only a few remaining traits – sexual orientation and immigrant status perhaps most prominent among them – do we as a nation continue to allow de jure distinctions to be drawn, almost all of them rooted in invidious intentions even those motivations have been forgotten or may be unconvincingly disavowed. As Dean of our Law School, I have sought to address these issues as they affect access to higher education and the justice system, though of course the consequences extend far beyond those areas with which it is eminently appropriate we be concerned.
It has been my practice to host events with various student groups, including, among others, BLSA, JLSA, and the Christian Law Students Association. The opportunity to interact informally with faculty, along with practitioners, is invaluable. I’d like to thank especially Professor Peter Hammer for attending the Outlaws-Stonewall function, along with philosophy Professor John Corvino.
