The University of Austin, the anti-woke glorified book club that Bari Weiss co-founded, teased a new law program a few weeks ago that it hoped to build in conjunction with the Federalist Society. Things appear to have escalated quickly since then, with the school announcing that it has formed a search committee to find the new dean for the program.
And it’s HOT!
Not really, but… well, you’ll see what I mean.
Ho, Oldham, and Thapar. Three of the most notable Supreme Court strivers on the appellate bench performing their Federalist Society duty by lending their names to a dean search for a non-existent law school. There are T14 law schools that would struggle to convince three sitting federal appellate judges to sift through a pile of academic applications, but sometimes you’ve got to do some yeoman’s work to stay on top of the Federalist Society pecking order.
We see what you did ordering those judges, but as a matter of graphic design, the T comes off wrong. It would only take a second to subtly stretch that over to complete the effect.
You can go ahead and apply here if you want. The listing is properly comical.
UATX seeks a dean to build America’s boldest legal program.
Not another pre-law program or law school. A new way to study law.
Unaccredited? That’s a kind of new way.
The University of Austin already announced that they would never seek ABA accreditation for any law program they might establish. Bashing the ABA is a MAGA shibboleth these days. The Trump administration declared its enmity early, still seething over the organization giving “not qualified” ratings to first time judicial appointees simply for being unqualified.
On the education front, conservatives long complained that the ABA required limited nods toward diversity as part of its accreditation process. Even though this reflected a tiny part of a process that’s mostly about schools graduating lawyers capable of passing the bar, this became a culture war sticking point that motivated right-wing state politicians to reject ABA accreditation. In the end, the ABA went ahead and voted to drop its diversity requirement, though the Department of Education decided to call the organization’s role as an accreditor in question anyway.
Also, “Not another pre-law program or law school. A new way to study law” reads as very, very ChatGPT.
You must be a:
Constitutionalist.
Builder.
Strategist.
Communicator.
Fundraiser.
This is a Dodge Ram commercial, not a professional academic job listing. Somewhere the author of the world’s most grating LinkedIn posts is nodding like Robert Redford from Jeremiah Johnson.
Mission alignment with UATX and a commitment to admitting students based on objective measures of their merit alone are required.
It’s interesting to see conservatives still talking about “merit” in education. This has been the watchword for the assault on diversity in education for decades — a polite way to bemoan the “injustice” of some minority students getting into college over mediocre white kids. But now that the Supreme Court handed them a crushing victory over affirmative action, the loudest voices of the “meritocracy” grift have started changing their tune. Chris Rufo, a right-wing education activist, has started informing conservatives that merit is also bad because it allows minorities to get into school over mediocre white kids.
From a recent Atlantic article specifically about the rise in anti-Indian bigotry:
“The right always says”—here [Rufo] adopted a mocking tone—“Oh, meritocracy, meritocracy, meritocracy. You morons. Meritocracy, the origin of the term meritocracy, it’s pejorative. It’s satirical. It’s not good. You actually don’t want meritocracy, because it perverts these unspoken cultural assumptions in ways that aren’t always visible, aren’t always, say, rationally defensible or problematic, but they strike at an essential component of the national character.”
Meritocracy was always a cause of convenience. Whatever it takes to push out every admission standard but the one these guys want.
To apply, submit three things:
1. A CV.
2. A letter of intent answering one question: What would you build, and how would it differ from the law schools that exist?
3. One piece of your writing you want the committee to read (e.g., an opinion piece, a brief, an article, a speech).
“An opinion piece” as the ideal writing sample suggestion. With 30 tries, I don’t think I could have come up with a more damning indictment of this program than this. It’s an institution with deep roots in the opinion page, where Weiss rose to prominence at the Times. Of course the new law school values a snippy blog post over scholarship. There’s nothing wrong with an opinion piece — serious thinkers write pieces for the masses all the time — it’s the priority placed on “opinion piece” that stands out.
Whether it wants to or not — and it wants to — the listing is telling candidates that the committee really doesn’t have time for your 100-page law review article on the applicability of admiralty law to saltwater lakes, and would much rather know that you can own the libs in a 600-word Substack post.
This will not run like your average job search. It will move fast.
That’s not how you build a law school. It is, however, how you find a hot take artist. Most law school searches dig deep into scholarship and try to strike a balance between academic reputation and managerial skill. It’s a process that can drag out for years. On the other hand, if a school just wanted to find a person willing to rack up cable news hits with “Dean of University of Austin Law School” on the chyron…
Well, it’s hard to think of how it would structure that search any differently than this.
Earlier: Federalist Society & Bari Weiss University Planning New Law School… Move Over ASSLaw!
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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