Fried: I agree with that.

Gassama: What has been happening here is that there has been a reaction to the formal way of teaching the law--the exclusion of these concerns--and so there has necessarily been a period in which students have gone the other way. But it is not necessary for it to be that way. If professors were to start out with a recognition of all concerns, not just one particular concern based on their up-bringing or their understanding of society. I think one would find a better atmosphere for critiquing various postions in great depth.

Dealing with your first point. Professor Fried about Harvard students being present at all levels of government and defining that to be public service. I think there is a vast segment of society that is still without representation. I'm not saying that it's necessarily the fault of the law, the legal profession. But we cannot neglect the fact that of the many Harvard students that end up in government. I don't think we find a vast proportion beginning at the bottom rungs of government and working their way to the top I think they generally start out somewhere in private service and then, later on, make some lateral moves.

Fried: That's certainly true, but the experience going back to the New Deal and before has shown quite clearly that excellent lawyers--whose careers began in corporate law--coming into public service are able to take a very broad view, and represent the public rather than the narrow interests that they have been paid to represent while they were in private practice.

Crimson: Do you want to comment on that?

Parker: I would say that people whose careers are built in large corporate firms, which are fundamentally bureaucratic operations, these people become highly polished bureaucrats, they become hierarchy addicts. When they move into government, many of them, of course, don't simply serve the narrow interests of their former clients but they nonetheless remain polished bureaucrats. And I think the American people are increasingly expressing their dissatisfaction with a government run by such people. I think there is evident in the primary elections right now a growing populist mood in the country, and I hope that one day fewer of these polished bureaucrats from corporate firms will fill government offices.

Crimson: Why don't we talk about minority hiring here at the law school? That might have been the issue that sparked a lot of the activism we've been seeing at the Law School over the last year.

Gassama: I think the students here are increasingly recognizing the political nature of the law, the relationship that the law has to what life is all about. And we are beginning to realize the importance of getting various viewpoints, that our education is not complete, that some people cannot tell us about certain things as well as others can. And that is what I think is behind this current demand for increased minority faculty.

Fried: I think there is a deep and fundamental fallacy to what Ibriham said, and that is the fallacy that there is some overlap or necessary connection between minority hiring on the one hand, and different points of view on the other. I think that is an undemonstrated assumption and, in fact, it's an assumption which, if really examined, would not be accepted. Because what's wanted in a person who is teaching law is an ability to think about and communicate the range of issues at the levels of detail and breadth that Richard set out, and which I agreed with, and I don't believe that a person's race is a relevant factor in identifying the ability to do that. It would seem to me that the way you identify the ability to think broadly, deeply and powerfully about the law is in terms of your accomplishments at the time that you are being considered for hiring. And there are white people who have a powerful sense and sensitivity to problems of oppression and there are non-white people who are not particularly interested in that issue. And the question is the actual perspective, and race is not really a useful surrogate for that.

Now, if what you were doing was picking 10,000 people, then you might want to use race as a surrogate to produce that variety. I think if you were picking several thousand people, as when you are picking a student body, you might want to do that. Because there what you are doing is you are picking people necessarily without a closely individualized look at what they have accomplished. But when you are picking a faculty member, you are picking in a very close way. You are looking at a lot about the person. This is a person who is not an unformed person and, at that point, what the person has done provides all the evidence you need for that decision.

Gassama: I think what is dangerous about what Professor Fried has said is the fact that there are many people, including the dean and president of this University, who believe that. And may I also suggest that probably only a white male can make the statement that was just made with such confidence. I think that there's a definite inconsistency in what you say, but first of all you're making a clever move in trying to reduce the demand for diversity in the faculty to one based solely on the candidate's race, dismissing the importance of what makes race important in this question. I think what makes race important is that a certain race of people have been excluded from the decision-making process of society. What they can do however, is demand that they be allowed to participate, demand that their viewpoints be taken into account, and that's what the issue is. My contention is that you and the other people who set the standards for hiring here simply do not recognize the contribution that can be made by people of different social and racial backgrounds. And we are saying that you are not qualified to determine the scholarship of these people, because of your background, because of your focus, because of the way you think about the law. We just simply have a different way of thinking about the law, of looking at the law.

Fried: Well, I think that is a deeply anti-intellectual statement. It turns an academic institution into a kind of United Nations. And ideas are not United Nations. An idea can be understood by anybody who seeks to understand it, and if it cannot be then it is not worthy of being taught, because it is not an idea.

Gassama: Who makes the decision that the idea cannot be understood? What if the Black students here unanimously decide after three years of law school that half of what you're teaching simply is not capable of being understood by them? Who decides then that should not be taught?

Fried: But that is, of course, not what's being said. They're not saying...

Gassama: That's not true, Professor Fried. I think if you take a poll of the Black students here, with one or two exceptions, you'll find a uniform view of the question of how, for example, criminal law is being taught here, as a Black person. If only some of them would have the courage to tell you, if only you would take the time to find out from them.