Why Legal Education Needs Abraham Lincoln
Even though it is the world's envy, America’s higher education system faces a massive crisis of public trust at home. Last summer, Gallup pollsters found that only about a third of Americans have either a “great deal” or “quite a lot of confidence” in the universities. After the recent upheaval sparked by radical student groups on campuses across the country, administrators and faculty seem powerless, if not complicit, in the destruction of their institutions.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro knows this crisis from unfortunate firsthand experience. In his new book Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites, he recounts how a far-left mob and university bureaucrats sympathetic to it used a poorly-worded social media post as a pretext to chase him out of his role as executive director of the Georgetown Law Center for the Constitution. But even beyond his personal experience, the corruption in legal education he unveils in the book should cause all Americans concern.
Americans’ frustration with elite institutions has no doubt been stoked by their capture by “woke” ideology. Although the word “woke” has become something of an overused cliché, it is undeniable that it describes a real phenomenon. Especially since the summer of 2020, ideologues have advanced their agenda by claiming that any opposition is inherently racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted. They weaponize bureaucracies to push policies of governments, schools, and even businesses as far to the left as possible.
Shifting political winds prove that Americans have had enough of the radical drift – but it is not entirely clear what should be done to stop it. Some recent executive orders have been good steps toward curbing the worst excesses, but clearly this problem goes deeper than a few new regulations can reach. A more general spirit of illiberalism has captured many minds, and it will take immense effort by conservatives throughout the country to persuade institutional leaders to set them back on the road to their original intent.
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