Arkansas Blog

A lawyer I am not. But one doesn't need to be a lawyer to know that the word "racist" is hurled far too often to describe others these days, and increasingly without justification. Prof. Peltz is critical of affirmative action? So are many black intellectuals. He exposed his third year law students to a satirical piece about Rosa Parks? Oh, please.

Based solely on the information provided in the news article, I'd say the only questionable (and certainly condescending) act performed by Peltz (if the allegation is true) was promising to award black students an extra point if they scored as high as white students on an exam.

First year of Law school they scare you to death, second year work you to death, third
year bore you to death.

I don't know the merits or lack of for this suit but I do know that there is no effective defense to accusations of racism.

How would you prove you are not racist? Claim some of my best freinds are Black? We know how ineffective that is.

>>award-winning law professor <<

Hmmm. Something about being a public figure. Attorneys please elaborate.

For a while I thought Bowen deserved their reputation as a good school, but I'll be damned if I am not consistently proven wrong. Bowen is a good school only by virtue of not being totally fucking sorry. Yeah, I know one or two top-notch attorneys with UALR as an alma mater, but for every one, there's a hundred advertising on park benches or working at JCPenny after failing to pass the bar.

Didn't DemGaz have a big spread on that in Sunday's paper?

Durangokid, while I understand your response was prefaced with the disclaimer that it was solely based on the information in the article, there's definitely a lot going on here that the article failed to mention. I don't think anyone at Bowen would have a problem with students being exposed to diverse views on affirmative action or even civil rights history. I would note, however, that in my experience I only knew the political beliefs of my professors from conversations outside of the classroom or thorough looks at their curricula vitae: they simply didn't feel like the chalkboard was their own personal pulpit, and I think that's perhaps a more prudent and appropriate attitude.

L.Wood, the question is likely not so much which test to use (public or private figure) it's whether or not being racist is the kind of thing that can even have truth to it, to be proven either way. As Citizen said, it's impossible to prove that you are not a racist. In fact, the argument could be made that it's always necessarily true. (As they say in Avenue Q ...)

Basil, regardless of your anecdotal accounts, Bowen consistently outpaces the other law school in this state in bar passage for first time takers. I know excellent graduates from both schools, though I attended neither. I've heard some people suggest that a state as small as Arkansas could benefit from concentrating its resources in only one law school, and I'm sometimes inclined to agree.

This was in Sunday's ArkDemGaz. From the letter from the Black Law Student Association to Dean Goldener"

"Then he displayed a satirical article about the death of Rosa Parks and the death of the Civil Rights Movement. . . The article was loaded on the Onion online magazine WHICH IS A CONSERVATIVE BASED MEDIUM that uses satire to address current events."

This shows you just how desperate and misguided the BLSA was to attack Professor Peltz. If they don't know about The Onion, they don't know beans.