Scott Gerber on who goes to conferences, etc.

[Rick Duncan]

I don't know what to think about this thread. When a law school is putting together a conference, some names come to mind more readily than others. But lots of people also turn down offers to speak.
   
  I have turned down numerous offers this year alone, because I have 4 young children with busy lives (I run a full time taxi service most evenings, driving children to ballet class, drama rehersals, karate class, softball games, speech tournaments, etc). Nothing personal, but I simply prefer to spend time with my children (and sharing parenting  with my wife) than with law profs talking about Newdow, and Van Orden, and same-sex marriage, and judicial activism vs. judicial independence.
   
  Let me close with a funny but true story about academic lectures and the custodian of this list, Eugene Volokh.
   
  A few years ago, I was chair of our lectureship committee here, and I succeeded in getting the committee to recommend inviting Eugene to give our most distingushed lecture, the Pound Lecture. My Dean vetoed the invitation, because he thought Eugene was too young and not sufficiently "established" in the profession to be a "Pound Lecturer."
   
   I can't remember who came instead; all I recall is a dusty drone that lasted for about an hour.
   
  To this day I tease my Dean that his standard for distinction is to invite "only very senior scholars who haven't written anything interesting for at least a decade." Of course, that's not completely true. We have had some very good Pound Lectures over the years. But also a lot of dusty ones! 
   
  Cheers, Rick Duncan




  Rick Duncan 
Welpton Professor of Law 
University of Nebraska College of Law 
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
   
  
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered." --The Prisoner


		
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