Following up on my prior posts (links below): the identity of the anonymous Law Prof behind the new blog, Law Professors Are Scamming Their Students, apparently will be revealed soon:
Brian Leiter (Chicago): “ScamProf is the failed academic who has done almost no scholarly work in the last decade, teaches the same courses and seminars year in and year out, and spends his time trying to attract public attention, sometimes under his own name, this time anonymously. These are important facts about ScamProf, since he is indeed scamming his students and his state, and his initial posts were tantamount to a confession that he’s not doing his job. His colleagues, in any case, now know who he is, and are quite understandably angry, since the reckless generalizations are naturally read as commentary on them. … When his identity comes out, there will be additional ironies that will warrant comment.”
Anonymous Law Prof: “I’ve received a couple of furious emails from an outraged colleague who claims that this blog is attacking him personally by ‘broad-brush insulting all law profs, and more specifically those at your school.’ He’s angry enough that he decided to try to ‘out’ me because, he said, ‘I’m not going to let this remain a one-sided fight whereby I’m attacked publicly and you get to hide from attacks.’ It’s clear this blog isn’t going to remain anonymous for much longer, so I’m going to say a couple words about why I started blogging anonymously in the first place. … I’m not sure how much longer maintaining formal anonymity will make sense in the context of this project.”
Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA): “The thing that puzzles me is: Why has nobody outed the dude? As Leiter put it the other day, his identity is obvious.”
Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:
- Anonymous Law Prof: ‘Law Professors Are Scamming Their Students’ (Aug. 11, 2011)
- More on ‘Anonymous Law Prof’ and ‘The Law School Scam’ (Aug. 13, 2011)
Other commentary:
- Orin Kerr (George Washington), What Drives Law School Tuition?
- Bruce MacEwen, A Disruptive Voice From Within the Academy
- Larry Ribstein (Illinois), A Response to LawProf and MacEwen
- Bruce MacEwen, LawProf, Me, and Larry Ribstein
Recent Anonymous Law Prof posts:
- Understanding the Rage of Recent Law School Graduates
- Other Barriers to Communication
- First Steps Toward Reform
- Getting Law School Costs Under Control
- Anonymity, the Critical Perspective, and Taking Things Personally
- Markets and Failure: A Response to Larry Ribstein
Update #1: Anonymous Law Prof, Apologia Pro Vita Sua [Latin: A Defense of One’s Life]:
In the two weeks since I started this blog, I’ve gotten many emails from practicing and former attorneys, unemployed law school graduates, current law students, and even several law professors, praising the project the blog is pursuing. I’ve found this response very encouraging, although of course not every correspondent has agreed with all my substantive arguments, or with what it would be fair to say has been the blog’s less than deeply respectful tone towards the current state of the legal academic enterprise. …
When I was doing background research for this piece [Elena Kagan, Barack Obama, and the American Establishment, by Paul Campos (Colorado)], I was reminded that the law faculty on which Professor Leiter currently serves includes several legal academics whose own professional work is in every sense admirable.
Update #2:
- Althouse (Ann Althouse)
- InstaPundit (Glenn Reynolds)
- Lawyers, Guns and Money (Paul Campos)
- Legal Insurrection (William Jacobson)
- Leiter’s Law School Reports (Brian Leiter)
- The Volokh Conspiracy (Jonathan Adler)
