I have several friends who are attending law school in the U.S., and all of them share your absence of surprise at Harvard’s problems with diversity. I hope that this does become an issue that’s discussed, that this question is asked. (Though, sadly, with the state of discourse in the U.S. being what it is, I’ll be more surprised if it IS addressed than if it isn’t.)

Thank you again for your insights!

I was tending toward happy last night, but then today was getting more depressed (this should teach me to watch the news–one shot of the gulf coast and I feel like I’m going to be physically ill). I feel better knowing that you are cautiously optimistic, or at least not horrified.

Sidenote: I drove across several states with my father yesterday, and as we stopped for coffee and gas we saw that Kagen had been nominated. My father is a strict Republican–though he recently told me that in his “old age” he’s tending towards libertarianism (yea? he definitely told me that expecting me to be really pleased about it…). We were briefly talking about it, and he made some vaguely pro-republican not-anti-Kagen comment, and I was like, “The rumor is she’s a lesbian.” My father, in all seriousness, acted confused as to why that mattered–because he honestly believes that no Republicans would ever care about whether a Supreme Court Judge might be a lesbian. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? Maybe not your kind of vaguely-don’t-care-about-gay-marriage libertarian-y republican, but if you haven’t noticed plenty of your fellow conservatives are rabid jesus freaks* who hate gay people.

He was like, “You’re crazy” and seriously looked at me like I had just said that Republicans want to cut military funding and invite some Iranian diplomats over to the white house for dinner. Like the concept that republicans are homophobic is a wild idea I got in my head that nobody, anywhere would even think, let alone agree with.

I mean, here’s hoping he’s right. But for real he is apparently a fucking idiot.

*Specifically jesus freaks as opposed to Christians, because honestly most of the really christian people I know are lesbians. Several of them are actually ministers or ministers-in-training. Go figure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digby_%28blogger%29

I think that Kagan’s actions were a mistake, of course. I don’t like that. What I am thinking about, however, is whether she can be persuaded to see how wrong they are, as opposed to whether she saw it at the time. I don’t now the answer to that question, of course. What I’m saying, though, is that it’s the question that actually matters to me.

I should have probably added in my post that I did not attend law school in this country, and that even in my own I attended one that is slightly idiosyncratic because it straddles legal systems. So to an extent, my belief in deliberativeness comes from a political culture that is somewhat different from this country’s. And which I have some natural, ingrained preference for.

over at Feministe a while ago, which means I had a sinking feeling in my stomach when I saw Kagan had been nominated. (Read down to the part where Kagan took part in a parody play which lampooned several woman students of color, and then declined to respond to requests for diversity sessions in the wake of the event.) This is of course anecdotal, but it was troubling to me. I’m interested in your opinion on this, Pilgrim Soul, if you have a chance to take a look at the article.