Monday, April 27, 2009
Do rankings punish law schools at religiously-affiliated institutions?
Maybe. See the intriguing discussion here. Rick Garnett (who comments there) is an especially astute law prof. at Notre Dame who has always impressed me.
Comments:
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I think it's a manifestation of the USN&WR's negative attitude toward clannishness among law schools in general. I mean, no one bats an eye of a Harvard or Yale grad goes to teach at Harvard or Yale or one of the other "top schools," but lower-ranked schools are penalized for not attracting teachers outside of their geographical region/ratings range/alumni pool.
Religiously-affiliated schools probably pull in professors that are at least somewhat related to the religion of the school. Do we have any Catholic professors at Baylor? What about unbelievers? Among my class, I am fairly certain that I was one of the only non-theists in the whole class.
And I don't recall meeting any Buddhists, Daoists, neo-pagans, or other minority religious groups on campus. I can think of a few people in Waco, though not students, I knew that were Hindu or Muslim.
What I'm saying is that there's not a lot of ideological, social or cultural diversity at Baylor. Not because Baylor is hostile per se, but because people largely self-select themselves for such an environment, and USN&WR looks unfavorably on this.
And while I agree that it does hamper students' exposure to other viewpoints and worldviews than their own, I can't say it really affects the academic quality of the school.
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Religiously-affiliated schools probably pull in professors that are at least somewhat related to the religion of the school. Do we have any Catholic professors at Baylor? What about unbelievers? Among my class, I am fairly certain that I was one of the only non-theists in the whole class.
And I don't recall meeting any Buddhists, Daoists, neo-pagans, or other minority religious groups on campus. I can think of a few people in Waco, though not students, I knew that were Hindu or Muslim.
What I'm saying is that there's not a lot of ideological, social or cultural diversity at Baylor. Not because Baylor is hostile per se, but because people largely self-select themselves for such an environment, and USN&WR looks unfavorably on this.
And while I agree that it does hamper students' exposure to other viewpoints and worldviews than their own, I can't say it really affects the academic quality of the school.
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