Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

A tad more on faculty retreats

My friend Mark Sargent, the outstanding dean of the Villanova law school, sends this response to my earlier post on faculty routs ... oops ... I mean retreats :

As a dean I make the following pledges: 1. I will never, never, never hold a faculty retreat. I would sooner open my veins with a rusty can opener. 2. "Mission" and "Vision" statements are worse than bunk. They are emblematic of the worst qualities of higher education today. I will never make my colleagues write one, unless the ABA makes me (which it did). You may quote me.

Now that's my kind of dean. I had forgotten that the ABA insists on a mission statement. It is not to me clear why the ABA does so. At bottom, virtually all of the ABA's rules are about cartelization of legal education. And since any idiot can crib a mission statement, it's not clear how that rule advances the ABA's cartel. Oh well, ours is not to reason why, ours is just to draft fluff.