18gudge511

Sometimes their fears were justifiedIll never...

10:54, 2010-Mar-18 .. Link

Sometimes their fears were justifiedIll never forget reading one black students exam paper with a mixture of disbelief and angerI knew he had studied like a demon and understood the material, but his exam didnt show itThe right answers were in there, but finding them required digging through piles of misspelled words, bad grammar, and poor sentence constructionAn As worth of knowledge was hidden in the bushes of an F presenta-tion, flawed by things he hadnt learned going all the way back to elementary schoolI gave him a B-, corrected the grammar and spelling, and decided to set up tutoring sessions to help transform the black students hard work and native intelligence into better resultsI think they helped, both substantively and psychologically, though several of the students continued to struggle with their writing skills and with the emotional burden of having one foot through the door of opportunity and the other held back by the heavy weight of past segregationWhen many of those students went on to distinguished careers as lawyers and judges, the clients they represented and the parties they judged male rolex watches probably had no idea how high a mountain they had had to climb to reach the bar or the benchWhen the Supreme Court upheld the principle of affirmative action in 2003, I thought of my black students, of how hard they worked and all they had to overcomeThey gave me all the evidence Id ever need to support the Courts ruling Besides my interaction with the students, the best thing about being a law professor was being part of a faculty filled with people I liked and admiredMy best friends on the faculty were two people my age, Elizabeth Osenbaugh and Dick AtkinsonElizabeth was a brilliant Iowa farm girl, a good Democrat, and a devoted teacher who became good friends with Hillary, tooEventually, she went back to Iowa to work in the Attorney Generals officeWhen I was elected President, I persuaded her to come to the Justice Department, but after a few years she again went back home, largely because she thought it would be better for her young daughter, BetsySadly, Elizabeth died of cancer in 1998, and her daughter went to live with Elizabeths brotherI have tried to keep in touch with Betsy over the years; her miu miu bags mother was one of the finest people Ive ever knownDick Atkinson was a friend from law school who had grown dissatisfied with private practice in AtlantaI suggested he consider teaching and urged him to come to Fayetteville for an interviewHe did, and was offered and accepted a position on our facultyThe students loved Dick, and he loved teachingIn 2003, he would become Dean of the Arkansas Law SchoolOur most famous and fascinating professor was Robert Leflar, the most eminent legal scholar our state ever produced, a recognized authority in torts, conflicts of law, and appellate judgingIn 1973, he was already past the mandatory retirement age of seventy and was teaching a full load for a dollar a yearHe had been on the faculty since he was twenty-sixFor several years before I knew him, Bob had commuted weekly between Fayetteville and New York, where he taught a course in appellate judging to federal and state judges at New York University Law School, a course that more than half the Supreme Court justices had takenHe was never late for class in either place Bob Leflar was a small, wiry man with huge, omega aqua terra watch piercing eyes, and he was still as strong as an oxHe couldnt have weighed more than 150 pounds, but while working in his yard he carried around big chunks of flagstone that I could hardly liftAfter every Razorback football homecoming game, Bob and his wife, Helen, hosted a party in their homeSometimes guests would play touch football in the front yardI remember one game in particular, when Bob and I and another young lawyer played against two big young guys and a nine-year-old boyThe game was tied and we all agreed that whoever scored next would winOur side had the ballI asked Bob if he really wanted to winHe was as competitive as Michael JordanSo I told the third man on our team to center the ball, let the rusher come after me, and go block the tall man defending the backfield to the rightThe nine-year-old was covering Bob, on the assumption that Id throw the ball to the taller, younger man, or that if Bob got the ball the kid would be able to touch himI told Bob to block the kid to the right too, then run hard left, and Id throw the ball to him right before the rusher got to meWhen the ball was snapped, Bob multicolor louis vuitton bags was so excited he knocked the boy to the ground and ran leftHe was wide open when our teammate completed his blocking assignmentI lobbed the ball to Bob and he ran across the goal line, the happiest seventy-five-year-old man in AmericaBob Leflar had a steel-trap mind, the heart of a lion, a tough will, and a childlike love of lifeHe was sort of a Democratic version of Strom ThurmondIf we had more like him, wed win more oftenWhen Bob died at ninety-three, I thought he was still too young to go Law school policies were set by the faculty at regular meetingsOn occasion I thought they ran too long and got too mired in details best left to the dean and other administrators, but I learned a lot about academic governance and politics in themGenerally, I deferred to my colleagues when there was a consensus because I felt they knew more than I did and had a longer-term commitment to the academic lifeI did urge the faculty to undertake more pro bono activities and to relax the publish or perish imperative for professors in favor of greater emphasis on classroom teaching and spending more out-of-class time with chanel cambon large tote bag stude

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18gudge511

Sometimes their fears were justifiedIll never...

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