In a Jan. 14 lecture, Ken Levy, Holt B. Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at Louisiana State University, dropped f-bombs against then–president-elect Donald Trump and Louisiana governor Jeff Landry and told students who like Trump that they need his “political commentary.”
Some students found the apparent attempt at political humor funny, according to an audio recording of the class obtained by Inside Higher Ed from a student who supports Levy.
But at least one student in the administration of criminal justice class who subsequently complained, according to LSU, wasn’t amused—and neither were the university and the governor. An LSU spokesperson said the institution “took immediate action to remove Professor Levy from the classroom after complaints about the professor’s remarks.”
Levy got a lawyer and took immediate action himself, pulling LSU into court instead of waiting for the university to take further steps internally regarding his job.
In the month since that lecture, state district court judges have twice ruled that Levy should return to the classroom, only for a state appeals court to twice overrule that. The back-and-forth nature of the case has attracted attention in Louisiana and in law circles, including via headlines such as “The LSU Law School Professor Free Speech Hot Potato Saga Continues.”
Landry also continues to discuss the case. A Republican governor who’s repeatedly insertedhimself in LSU affairs, Landry used social media in the fall to call on the university to punish one of Levy’s law school colleagues for alleged in-class comments about Trump-supporting students. Landry has now repeatedly posted about Levy, recently saying an alleged exam he gave was incendiary and suggesting that “maybe it’s time to abolish tenure.”
In and Out
In the lecture in question, Levy referenced Landry’s previous criticism of his LSU colleague Nick Bryner, adding that he “would love to become a national celebrity [student laughter drowns out a moment of the recording] based on what I said in this class, like, ‘Fuck the governor!’”
Levy also referenced Trump. “You probably heard I’m a big lefty, I’m a big Democrat, I was devastated by— I couldn’t believe that fucker won, and those of you who like him, I don’t give a shit, you’re already getting ready to say in your evaluations, ‘I don’t need his political commentary,’” Levy told students. “No, you need my political commentary, you above all others.”
A few days after that lecture, LSU notified Levy he was suspended from teaching pending an investigation into student complaints, according to a letter from the university provided by Levy’s attorney, Jill Craft.
On Jan. 28, Craft filed a request for a temporary restraining order against LSU to get Levy back in the classroom. The filing alleged that a student complained to the governor, not LSU, and calls were then made to LSU. A state district court judge granted the restraining order Jan. 30 without a hearing.
In the first reversal, a panel of appellate judges wrote Feb. 4 that the lower court shouldn’t have approved the return-to-teaching part of the temporary restraining order without a full evidentiary hearing. But after the lower court held a two-day hearing last week, a different group of appellate judges overruled Levy’s return to teaching again—without explaining why.
Local journalists who covered last week’s hearing reported that district court judge Tarvald Anthony Smith kicked an LSU deputy general counsel out of the courtroom because the lawyer told the law school dean, who was a scheduled and sequestered witness, about a student witness’s earlier testimony. The testimony was reportedly that the student had recorded a conversation with the dean.
Smith ruled Feb. 11 that LSU policy required the university to keep Levy in class during the investigation of his comments, WBRZ reported. But a Feb. 4 statement from university spokesman Todd Woodward to Inside Higher Ed suggested the investigation was already over: “Our investigation found that Professor Levy created a classroom environment that was demeaning to students who do not hold his political view, threatening in terms of their grades and profane.” The university didn’t make anyone available for an interview about the case.
Amid this legal back-and-forth, Landry continues to denounce Levy on social media. Last week, Landry posted on X an alleged exam from Levy that included potential sexual and other crimes committed by various fictitious individuals and asked students at the end to “discuss all potential crimes and defenses.” The narrative included a teen who put his penis into pumpkins on Halloween and was seen by trick-or-treating children, and a powerful Republican and suspected pedophile who invited the children inside to dance for him.
“Disgusting and inexcusable behavior from Ken Levy,” Landry wrote on X regarding what he claimed was Levy’s test. “Deranged behavior like this has no place in our classrooms! If tenure protects a professor from this type of conduct, then maybe it’s time to abolish tenure.” Asked about this document, Craft said she believes the assignment was part of the sex crimes portion of Levy’s criminal law exam years ago, but she did not confirm it.
After the latest appellate ruling in LSU’s favor, Landry wrote on X that “Levy should stay far, far away from any classroom in Louisiana!”
Craft said Levy has received death threats on X due to Landry’s comments there. “This seems to be a situation entirely of the governor’s making,” she said. “He has been active on social media, trying to accuse my client of all kinds of bad things. He’s a lawyer himself. He attacked the courts and the judge.”
Landry’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Craft also said Levy’s roughly 80 students remain with another 80 in another professor’s classroom.
“I’m not sure how he can handle office hours for 160 law students,” Craft said of that second professor. The university says it’s doubled the number of student tutors for the course.
No Longer the U.S.?
Craft said Levy was set to return to the classroom Feb. 13, but Louisiana’s First Circuit Court of Appeal issued its two-sentence order around 9:30 a.m. that appeared to stay the part of the lower court’s order that returned Levy to teaching.
LSU again kept Levy out of the classroom Tuesday, Craft said. But she said the rest of the lower court order remains in place, at least for now, and that prevents LSU from taking further employment action against Levy due to his expression.
“This is a critical issue, and I feel like we have got to, as a nation, understand that there has to be academic freedom, there has to be free speech in this country, and there have to be protections against governmental intrusions without due process,” she said. “We take all that away and we are no longer the United States of America.”
“Censorship” built into rapidly growing generative artificial intelligence tool DeepSeek could lead to misinformation seeping into students’ work, scholars fear.
But with students likely to start using the tool for research and help with assignments, concerns have been raised that it is censoring details about topics that are sensitive in China and pushing Communist Party propaganda.
When asked questions centering on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, reports claim that the chat bot replies that it is “not sure how to approach this type of question yet,” before adding, “Let’s chat about math, coding and logic problems instead!”
When asked about the status of Taiwan, it replies, “The Chinese government adheres to the One China principle, and any attempts to split the country are doomed to fail.”
Shushma Patel, pro vice chancellor for artificial intelligence at De Montfort University—said to be the first role of its kind in the U.K.—described DeepSeek as a “black box” that could “significantly” complicate universities’ efforts to tackle misinformation spread by AI.
“DeepSeek is probably very good at some facts—science, mathematics, etc.—but it’s that other element, the human judgment element and the tacit aspect, where it isn’t. And that’s where the key difference is,” she said.
Patel said that students need to have “access to factual information, rather than the politicized, censored propaganda information that may exist with DeepSeek versus other tools,” and said that the development heightens the need for universities to ensure AI literacy among their students.
Thomas Lancaster, principal teaching fellow of computing at Imperial College London, said, “From the universities’ side of things, I think we will be very concerned if potentially biased viewpoints were coming through to students and being treated as facts without any alternative sources or critique or knowledge being there to help the student understand why this is presented in this way.
“It may be that instructors start seeing these controversial ideas—from a U.K. or Western viewpoint—appearing in student essays and student work. And in that situation, I think they have to settle this directly with the student to try and find out what’s going on.”
However, Lancaster said, “All AI chat bots are censored in some way,” which can be for “quite legitimate reasons.” This can include censoring material relating to criminal activity, terrorism or self-harm, or even avoiding offensive language.
He agreed that “the bigger concern” highlighted by DeepSeek was “helping students understand how to use these tools productively and in a way that isn’t considered unfair or academic misconduct.”
This has potential wider ramifications outside of higher education, he added. “It doesn’t only mean that students could hand in work that is incorrect, but it also has a knock-on effect on society if biased information gets out there. It’s similar to the concerns we have about things like fake news or deepfake videos,” he said.
Questions have also been raised over the use of data relating to the tool, since China’s national intelligence laws require enterprises to “support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.” The chat bot is not available on some app stores in Italy due to data-related concerns.
While Patel conceded there were concerns over DeepSeek and “how that data may be manipulated,” she added, “We don’t know how ChatGPT manipulates that data, either.”
LinkedIn is one of my favorite social media platforms for academics. It’s become more popular in the last year, especially since things have changed at Twitter. So I wanted to chat with you about LinkedIn today.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne of The Social Academic. Today we’re going to be talking about LinkedIn.
Twitter isn’t dead, but the state of social media has changed
So first, the state of social media has changed. I would say since things changed at Twitter, people have been asking me where should I go next?
The answer is that academics are on every social media platform. If you don’t want to use threads or Mastodon or Blue Sky or any of these kind of new platforms that are popping up where you hear academics are spending time, that’s totally okay. They’re still on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, like TikTok, all the major platforms. I promise that you are going to find an academic audience wherever you feel like spending time.
That being said, LinkedIn is my number one recommendation for professors and researchers. LinkedIn is not just for business people. Professors are finding that their audiences are already there. People like their colleagues, administrators at their university, people that they might be talking with, offices on campus, they know that their collaborators are probably on LinkedIn. Even if they don’t have a profile that they use often, that’s somewhere, that they have potential to connect. Who else? Your research funders, editors, publishers, members of the media like journalists, scientific community, policymakers, all sorts of people who might care about your research in particular are already on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn used to be a social media platform that was really specifically for professionals, especially when they were on the job market when career searching. But academics find that LinkedIn is effective and a good use of their time even when they’re not job searching, and that’s kind of my specialty.
I mostly work with professors who want to have a stronger social media and online presence, but they’re not actually looking for jobs. They just want to be better connected with people in their community.
So first, LinkedIn is not just for business people.
Second, your LinkedIn profile shows up in Google search results. This means that it does have a strong impact on your online presence, and LinkedIn profiles tend to show up at the top of those search results.
So not only does it impact your online presence, it can be a really good answer for people when they know that there’s potential to find what they’re looking for. Oftentimes, people might be looking for contact information. They might be looking for what your current research is about. They might be looking for a photo of you because they’re going to meet you at a conference next month. So I want to let you know there’s many reasons why people might be looking for you online, and your LinkedIn profile might be the answer that they can be looking for.
You don’t need to pay for LinkedIn (or other social media platforms)
LinkedIn is free, so there are many social media platforms that are free. Some of them, they have an option for premium, including LinkedIn. But to be honest, you do not need to be spending money on social media platforms to have a strong online presence.
I don’t spend any money on social media platforms, and even though I have friends that have upgraded to say the premium version of Twitter, like it hasn’t really paid off for them in a way that makes it super effective.
I’m just saying that I don’t actually recommend paying for social media even if you have the budget for it. So LinkedIn is a great free way to build your online presence.
Finding people on LinkedIn with advanced search
I love that LinkedIn has a powerful search. So number three is that LinkedIn profiles really do show up in Google search results, but they also show up when people are searching for your name or something that is on your profile on LinkedIn. So for instance, let’s see, what can I use as an example?
Let’s say an English professor who has a specific focus in American literature has a profile on LinkedIn because they have professor of American literature in their profile, both in their headline and in their about section, that profile will show up on Google search results potentially, but also within LinkedIn search results.
So if I’m looking for professors of English, especially people who focus on American literature, I can type that into the LinkedIn search bar and find all the people that are in, say, the United States. You can even narrow it by specific region or location. So I could find American literature professors in Oklahoma, for instance.
There are so many opportunities to find more people who care about the things that you do, who care about the research that you’re working on within a specific location using that search. So LinkedIn search is really powerful. It’s helpful for finding people within your research interest. It’s also helpful for people finding people at your university or who are alumni of the same programs that you are.
Professors are joining LinkedIn (and updating long-forgotten profiles)
Other professors are on LinkedIn. Number four is that you can find the people that you want to connect with there.
Now, I’m not saying that everyone you know is on LinkedIn, but the chances are at some point in the last decade or so, they’ve created a profile. They’ve created a LinkedIn profile, whether they use it or not, and they have some kind of presence on LinkedIn. This isn’t true for everyone.
I mean, for so long, LinkedIn was known as a platform that is not really for academics. It was kind of so business-y and there wasn’t a lot of conversation that was outside of job searching, and so it wasn’t a place where academics were spending time.
I have seen so many more academics who want to post and share their thought leadership and research on LinkedIn. But there’s also thousands and thousands and thousands of professors who are on LinkedIn and never post at all.
The people that you want to connect with are probably there, and if they’re not there yet, they probably will be soon because like I said, it is a growing platform for professors and researchers.
Inviting people to connect with you, build your scholarly community
Number five is that the other people that are there are people that you probably care about, whether they’re research funders, publishers, editors, members of the community or policymakers, the people outside of the ivory tower who need to find what you’re working on, who can be impacted by it and put it into practice.
There is potential to reach those people on LinkedIn, and I’m saying that there’s potential to do that even if you never post.
I want you to be more open-minded about what LinkedIn could do for you as a professor. It’s not just about job searching. It’s not just about talking about your research or kind of showcasing who you are.
It’s kind of an invitation. I like that LinkedIn profiles when they’re filled out are, it’s like you being open to having people find you and connect with you and reach out to you if it’s relevant to them, even if you never post at all. Having an awesome LinkedIn profile is great for professors.
How long does it take to make my LinkedIn profile?
One question I wanted to be sure to answer today is how long does it typically take to do a LinkedIn profile? That’s a really good question because it really depends.
If you are starting from scratch and all you have is an hour or two to put into your LinkedIn profile, please do it.
Any small change that you can make to your online presence for your LinkedIn profile makes a difference. I encourage you to spend any amount of time that you have in your schedule on making an improved LinkedIn presence for yourself as a professor. It can really help people better connect with you.
How long does it take me to do a LinkedIn profile? Well, it’s taken, kind of different amounts of time for different people, and when I’m doing a done for you profile, it typically takes upwards of 7 hours.
I would say 7-9 hours total is about how long it takes for me to do a LinkedIn profile.
That, to be honest, I could probably spend another 5-7 hours on it and to find even more ways to improve it because that’s how my brain works. The more I understand a platform, the more I understand the person that I’m writing for, the better I can make the profile.
So there’s always opportunity, I think to make a difference with our LinkedIn profiles, but typically the amount of time that I spend for what I would say is a really great LinkedIn profile that meets all of my professor clients’ needs, it’s about 7-9 hours. And that includes a planning meeting, includes everything done for you and a review meeting to make sure that we can make any tweaks or changes in real time.
So it takes quite a bit of time, and that’s why when professors come to me and they’re like, I want a stronger LinkedIn presence, but I know I don’t have time to fit into my calendar. I know, I mean 7-9 of your time is like that’s not only a full day away from your research and the things that matter to you. It’s like time away from your family and the people who you care about. It’s a big commitment, and so I would never, I would never say you have to make this commitment for yourself.
If you don’t have 7-9 hours in your time to work on your LinkedIn profile, I absolutely understand. Please don’t push yourself to do something that is beyond your capacity, especially if this is your first time really being intentional about your online presence on LinkedIn.
Tips for your professor LinkedIn profile
There are so many ways that we can have a stronger online presence, but really any small change that you make makes a difference. So let me tell you the sections of your LinkedIn profile I recommend that you update first because these are the places where people are really looking to know a little bit more about your story and the things that matter to you.
On your LinkedIn profile, the thing that people most often see is your LinkedIn headline. It is a specific number of characters (220), and it’s that little kind of section that goes right next to your profile photo right under your name that people will see when they come across your profile on LinkedIn.
They’ll also see it if they’re already connected with you and they’re seeing you post. So your LinkedIn headline shows up in a lot of places.
When I see professors on LinkedIn, what I most often see is associate professor at university name. That’s actually not enough information for people to know whether they should even click on your profile to learn more about you. They need a little bit more information about your field of research, the area that you teach or the values that you really care about, the change that you want to see in the world. And so if you can fit a little bit more about you, a little bit more detail, a little bit more invitation, that will make a huge difference for your LinkedIn headline.
Profile photo
You’re going to want to have a profile photo that looks like you. On LinkedIn, there is I would say a tendency to use your traditional business headshot, but I wouldn’t feel pressured that you have to use that. If you have a selfie, if you have a friend of you take a photo or a family member.
Let’s see. I have had clients who go out and do professional photo shoots, so there’s lots of options to get new photos that you can use on social media.
But for your LinkedIn profile photo, I really encourage you to have something that is more focused on your face, and that’s because when people are on mobile screens and they’re scrolling it’s kind of small. It’s small enough that if it was more of a upper body shot, I might not recognize you from the photo because your head is then so small that it’s hard to recognize features. So if you can have a little bit of a closer shot for your LinkedIn profile photo, that makes a difference.
Cover photo
Ooh, your cover photo. So one of the first things that people see if they’re seeing the entry for your LinkedIn profile in search results is if you have a cover photo, which is a background photo on other social media platforms.
It’s like a horizontal photo that goes on the top of your profile and gives you opportunity to share a little bit more about yourself through that image. Now, some people prefer something simple like just a solid rectangle of a specific color. So you could just choose your favorite color and use that as your cover photo.
But if you have photos that you’ve taken, photos that you care about or even searching stock images on something like Unsplash or Pexels, in order to find photos that feel like you or maybe remind people of your research, this is a great opportunity to add a touch of personality to your profile.
Now in my LinkedIn for Profiles Course, people do learn how to create a simple cover photo using the design platform Canva, and there are templates already in Canva that you can use to create something that is a little bit more custom. So I want you to know that that’s an option. It’s actually pretty easy to learn. There’s YouTube videos about it.
I want you to know that you have the capability to do fun, custom visual things for your LinkedIn profile, but don’t feel pressured. Again, like I said, if you just choose your favorite color and set that, it will make a difference.
Your LinkedIn About section
Faculty often overlook the about section of your LinkedIn profile. This is a section where you can provide your bio or a little welcome note that says, “Hi, I’m Jennifer, welcome to my profile,” and a little bit about you. So some people write this in the first person, some people write this in the third person, whichever feels more comfortable to you is what I would go with. But this is the number one place people will go to learn more about you.
I don’t recommend just copy and pasting your academic bio. A more general audience is going to be visiting your LinkedIn profile than say, your faculty profile or your Academia.edu.
I want to make sure that one, any jargon is explained, any words that people don’t understand could use a phrase or a sentence of definition.
I want people to know what you do, but I also want them to know what you value, what you care about, why you do what you do. That’s what’s going to help them be curious to explore the rest of your profile or to reach out and connect with you.
I also want people to know how to get in touch with you. So don’t forget to include, say your email address or an invitation to maybe send you a LinkedIn message if you would like people to be able to take that next step and get in touch. Let them know what the best way or preferred method of doing that is.
Experience section
The next section the academics should definitely fill out is the Experience section. This is where you can add your work experience entries. This is a good opportunity to talk about your teaching, to talk about your research. You can even share links to your program so people can learn more about the specific courses that you’re taking or the kind of environment that you’re in.
There’s lots of opportunity to give people more information in the LinkedIn experience section, but if you don’t have a lot of time just filling out the entry with the title of your role, the location of your employer and the time span of which you’ve worked there is enough. If you don’t have time to add details, if you don’t have time to add media links like PDFs or links to maybe the website of the program, I want you to know you don’t have to fill all of that out. The more information that you can give people that is curiosity provoking, that is memorable will help make a difference.
Education section
The Education section is the next place that I know academics typically fill out. In your education section, you have opportunity to include a little bit more information. Some things that academics consider including is if they had fellowships during that time, if they had publications that they were particularly proud of, or if they have maybe an event that they organized and wanted to share a little bit more about.
People also use the detail section of the entry in order to include information that may still help people feel better connected to you. Maybe it’s a description of the type of research that you were working on then, the lab that you were working in, any collaborators that you worked with. It’s a great place to add activities or awards, and I’ve also seen people include information like ‘I’m a first generation student,’ or ‘I had a full fellowship for being a minority STEM student and this is something that I’m really proud of because it made an impact on my education.’
You don’t have to just list things there. This is your space to tell more of your story. Those are the sections that I think matter most. I know there’s so many sections on LinkedIn. The more you fill out, I would say the better.
Publications
One thing to avoid is in the publications section, even if you have a lot of publications, it ends up being just a really long list on your LinkedIn profile. So go ahead and pick maybe four to six publications. I wouldn’t say more than that is particularly helpful, but there’s a great opportunity to share . . . things that you don’t have room for on your LinkedIn profile or you’re not quite sure where it fits in.
Featured
LinkedIn has a featured section. It’s something that goes at the top of your profile, and you can add media like your CV. You could add links. You can add links actually to posts that you’ve shared on LinkedIn or articles. It gives you lots of opportunity to be creative.
If you have a link on a personal website or you want to upload your CV for that full list of publications, please do that. There are opportunities to share more, but on your LinkedIn profile, it is better to be a bit selective with the project section and the publication section because those end up being really long lists on a one page profile.
A nice thing about LinkedIn profiles is that even though there can be a lot of information, people aren’t necessarily shown all of that information at once. Typically, they’re just shown your first few experience entries, and then the more you add, there’s a little show more button that you can click to be able to view that information.
So you can add more information, even if it feels a little bit overwhelming for you, and just know that on the other end when people are experiencing your profile, they’re having the opportunity to choose to see that information and are not forced to or anything. It’s a choice. It’s an exploration, an invitation for people to keep reading.
One question I’ve gotten is about a newer feature on LinkedIn profiles. It’s called Creator Mode, and this is an opportunity for people to have the things that they create, like social media posts on LinkedIn be highlighted on their profile. It has a couple other features, like it switches your connect button over to a follow button.
I have creator mode turned on my profile because I do share posts on LinkedIn.
Creator mode is not right for you if you’re probably not going to post on LinkedIn very often. It’s also probably not right for you if you want people to be able to connect with you easily.
A reason why I have creator mode on is because I post a lot and because of that, people have opportunity to follow me and be able to see my posts. Not all of those people are quite right connections for me. Maybe they’re in another field, but they really care about what I’m saying. I want them to still be able to see my posts.
But in a sense, I also want to protect my audience. I want to protect my connections from any business-y things or sales-y things. I don’t want someone just connecting with me and then spam messaging all of the people that I know, and so I am quite protective over who I connect with and who I don’t. Sometimes business people connect with me. Sometimes coaches connect with me, and I really want to protect the academics that are part of my network from any kind of unwanted messaging.
If you have time to kind of go through connection requests and check out your followers list to see if there’s anyone who didn’t know how to connect with you, but wanted to and you want to connect with them, then turning Creator Mode on makes sense.
Like, you want to have that attention and focus to be able to do those steps because otherwise people are going to not know how to connect with you, and it just changes the profile setup to feature those posts.
If you’re not posting and you don’t have time to do the admin side of being in creator mode, which involves checking those things that I just mentioned, it just doesn’t make sense for you.
Actually for each of my clients, we’ve really talked about what is your professor life? Are you someone who is going to be posting often? Because if you’re not, that’s okay.
If you have a filled out LinkedIn profile and it’s inviting people to connect with you in the ways that make sense for you, then you don’t need to post. Posting is a plus, but it’s not a requirement by any means on LinkedIn or frankly on any other social media platform.
I used to have courses that taught people how to post across platforms. Then I realized that what people need is the ability to post when they want to, how they want to, and they don’t need to, to post everywhere. You don’t need to be everywhere. You don’t need to be consistent even if you can show up intentionally when you do.
When you are posting, if you’re thinking about the people you want to reach and you’re providing them with the information that they need to connect, yay! And if it’s not all the time, that’s totally fine. So posting on social media is great when you have time to do it. It’s great when you want to do it. It’s great skill when you want to get better at it, it can reach so many people. But having a filled out LinkedIn profile I would say is more of an important thing. It’s a better use of your time first.
If you’re someone who’s new to social media or you don’t really post on social media, I still recommend a professor LinkedIn profile for you. So Creator Mode, not recommended for most professors. If you’re going to be posting, and you have time to do some admin checking to see about connections versus followers, then you’re good. Turn it on, it’ll help you reach more people. But if you’re not going to post, don’t bother.
Sending connection requests on LinkedIn
Next, ooh, sending connection requests. Once you have a filled out profile, connecting with people is the next step, and that can feel scary to some professors. Even reaching out to people and care about can still feel a little bit worrying, like a little bit like a task that would be easy to avoid. That’s totally okay. I get it. I get it.
Connecting with people can feel awkward. One thing that people worry about is like, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to take me so much time to write messages to each of those people, and I don’t know. What if they don’t even read it?” But I would say if you have a filled out LinkedIn profile, there’s not really a need to send personalized notes to people. If they are visiting your profile and they’re like, “I don’t know what I would ever talk about this person with. I have no idea who they are, and I can’t see myself even having a conversation with them because their profile and what I do and what I think about isn’t really aligned.” I mean, that happens and that’s okay.
Your profile can be kind of that invitation. Your profile when you put thought and intention into it can really help people know whether you’re a good person to connect with or not. And if you are reaching out and connecting with them, my guess is that you probably know them. So all they need to see is your filled out profile.
You may get some messages from people who you’ve reached out to connect with that are like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited you’re on LinkedIn!” That’s what happened to my recent professor client once he joined after many years of people telling him he should and not having the time to do it. I mean, it’s understandable. He has children, he has a family, he has research, he has priorities.
You’re a professor with priorities too. It’s okay if your LinkedIn profile isn’t one of them.
Get support for your LinkedIn profile
There are different ways to have a stronger social media presence on LinkedIn.
You can do it yourself
You can totally do this yourself, even if you only have an hour today to set up your LinkedIn profile, and all you do are your headline, your profile photo, and your bio, I will be so proud of you.
That will be a huge plus for you. So please know that any amount of time that you spend on your own LinkedIn profile is great.
All you have to do is a planning meeting with me. We’ll talk about your CV. We’ll talk about the people that you want to reach. We’ll talk about your goals, and if you have things to share with me, if you have projects that you care about and you want me to make sure to include that report that made a difference in people’s lives, we’ll gather all those materials first.
Then on your VIP day, it’s all about your LinkedIn profile. We’ll meet in the morning to get me set up so I have access to your profile. I’ll do the whole profile for you. It’s like a process that you really, you can focus on the things you need to that day.
I might email you a question, but for the most part, I’m doing all of the work for you so you can relax and have the weekend to focus on your family, to have that date focus on your teaching and your research and the things that you care about most.
Once the day is over, we typically meet the next morning, the next day to make sure that we can look at your LinkedIn profile together, make any needed changes in real time so that your profile looks and feels like you.
We always actually have some changes to the cover photo. So cover photos are something that people often are like, “oh, I don’t really have any ideas.” But once we get talking about it, we’re like, “oh, how can we connect this to the places that I love or the research that I care about?” Or people actually find sometimes they have photos of them with their students or photos of them on campus. That is something that we can use for that space.
There’s a lot of opportunity for us to be creative together about how to make your LinkedIn profile more personal, more colorful, more you.
After we review your profile, there’s always time for training on how to use LinkedIn because most of the faculty that come to me, they don’t know how to use LinkedIn at all. They don’t necessarily want to post. Some professors tell me straight up, “I’m probably not ever going to post,” and I say, “That’s okay.”
That’s okay because this work on your profile is still going to help people connect with you. It’s still going to help people be able to find you, share your research, and do these things that you care about, these goals that we’ve talked about.
Now, when you don’t post on LinkedIn, that’s great. You don’t have to, but LinkedIn you should know is a place that you can post. You can post sporadically, you can post longer things like articles. You can have live events, you can share videos. You can share photos and PDFs and reports.
There’s lots of opportunities to share things on LinkedIn if that’s something that you are curious about. So we do personalized training at the end of your LinkedIn, VIP day, at the end of that profile review meeting to make sure that you know how to do the things on LinkedIn that’s going to make sense for your life, for your goals, and for the things that you actually want to accomplish with LinkedIn.
If that’s really networking and connecting with the people, the people that you care about most, we can actually start doing that process together. That’s what my last client and I did, and we had so much fun reaching out to some past students and making sure that we were connecting with people in his life that mattered and making sure that we were connecting with people at the university.
There’s lots of opportunity for us to move your LinkedIn presence and your social media profiles together. Really a full transformation, not only on what goes on the profile, but how you use the platform during that LinkedIn VIP day.
Free resources to support your LinkedIn presence as an academic
If you’re someone who’s like, wow, that sounds amazing, but I think that that’s more than I even want to do. Just start. I have free resources to share with you on The Social Academic that help you update different sections of your profile.
I have one that’s specifically for graduate students, so I’m going to share all of these resources with this podcast episode.
I want you to know that any small change that you do for your LinkedIn profile makes a difference. You do not need to work with me in order to have a great LinkedIn profile.
I work with, I would say, mid-career academics, senior career academics, higher education administrators, principal investigators, people who really have a lot on their plate. They know that this is going to make a difference for the people that they support, the communities that they want to reach and the communities that they care about, but they’re just not going to have the time.
So if that’s you, if you’re someone who knows that you’re not going to have the time, but that this is something that you need, I’m here to help you.
My name is Jennifer van Alstyne. Thank you so much for listening to this episode all about LinkedIn profiles and why LinkedIn is amazing for academics.
If you’re writing a book and you want people to read it, watch this. Dr. Jane Jones invited me to talk about how to share your book on social media for academic authors.
Who is your reader? Who’s interested in reading your monograph, edited collection, or academic book? How do you get a bigger audience for your book as an academic? You deserve a stronger online presence for your book. Let’s talk about finding your book’s audience on social media.
I’m sitting in my office with a cup of tea thinking about how many of the academics I work with experience anxiety when it comes to talking about themselves. When I sat down to write this episode, I realized I was having some of that anxiety myself.
Today’s episode of The Social Academic is all about me, Jennifer van Alstyne. But, it almost didn’t get recorded.
I thought talking about myself and why I started my business, The Academic Designer LLC, was something you wouldn’t want to hear. I don’t know why I felt that way. I’m always asked about my origin story when I go on podcasts as a guest. I tell most of my clients how I got started.
I had a lot of hesitancy when it came publishing on The Social Academic about myself.
You probably noticed that most of my content is focused on educational how-to’s about how to have an online presence as a professor. When I went back to my very 1st blog post, called Welcome to The Social Academic, I realized that I don’t share a lot about myself with you.
When I told a friend I was going to record this episode, she said, “I’ve always been curious about you!” Getting that kind of response made me feel warm, and helped me get ready to record my story for you. My friend is probably excited that this episode will finally come out. Thank you for encouraging me!
Have you ever worried about bragging or self promotion? Professors tell me that it brings them anxiety to talk about themselves. They don’t want other people to feel like they’re bragging. They don’t want to come across as narcissistic.
But telling your story, sharing why you do the research you do, will make a difference to the people in your life. And the people who care about your research. The people you want to help most.
It’s been 5 years since I started my business The Academic Designer LLC working with professors to build personal websites and social media so you have a strong online presence you can feel confident about.
5 years into my business, I realize I am personally struggling with the same thing that stops my clients from talking about themselves online.
It’s a great reminder that our feelings about what we share, how we share it, and why change over time. I knew that it was time for me to push past my comfort zone and share this episode, my story, with you.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic blog, podcast, and YouTube channel. Before we dive into today’s episode please subscribe to The Social Academic. Stick around for the whole episode because I’m going to share about my online presence program for professors where we work together 1:1 to create the digital footprint you need. Get support from me on your personal website,social media, and a new bio that shares who you are with the world.
I remember the moment I had the idea for my business so clearly. I was sitting in my professor’s office at the university, her desk with an old desktop computer and even older books. My bag on the floor was leaning against my leg. My professor and I finished up a meeting about the online course we designed together. I packed up my things, placing the cap back on my pen. I slipped it into my bag and stood to leave.
My professor asked me, “Do you know anyone who would be great for this role? We really want someone who wants to grow and learn for their future career.”
You see, my academic department was hiring a graduate student assistant to do professional writing and communication. They were putting together a team to handle things like the website and social media.
I sat back down. “You want me for this job. I’m perfect.”
I already knew I wasn’t interested in moving on to a PhD, despite all the encouragement of my mentors and peers. This? This role would give me an opportunity to gain valuable skills and experience. But I only had one semester left before I was done. My professor was looking for a person on behalf of the supervisor of this role. And they had discussed someone who could stay on for a year or more.
So I argued for myself. And told her why I was the best. It was the first time I felt so sure I was the right person for a project.
I pitched myself then because I knew I was the best person to help. My professor’s disappointment that I didn’t want to continue in academia didn’t deter me from sticking up for myself. It didn’t lessen the excitement I felt when talking because I knew in that moment I had a path forward perfect for me.
I didn’t know at the time that my business, The Academic Designer LLC would help professors increase their confidence talking about themselves. That I would love empowering academics to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. That specificity about my business came later.
It was in my professor’s office that I discovered that spark, and knew that I would own my own business after graduate school.
Thinking back on it, my professor impacted my feelings about working with academics. You see, she didn’t have a strong online presence. The 1st thing that came up when you Googled my professor’s name was her faculty profile. But her faculty profile hadn’t been updated in years! It didn’t reflect her promotion or current research interests.
You may have noticed that your faculty profile on your university website doesn’t really reflect who you are now. Maybe it hasn’t been updated in a while. Oftentimes it’s limited. Many faculty members, just like my professor, weren’t sure what information made the most sense to include on their faculty profile.
Universities often put the responsibility on professors to write their own faculty profiles. Universities don’t offer the kind of support professors need to keep your profile updated as your research and teaching interests change over time. Universities also don’t offer the kind of staff that is needed to support the technical side of updates, actually making those changes on the website. And if your university does provide staff support, they’re likely overworked and might not get to update your faculty profile because of the many responsibilities they have.
Writing a new faculty profile for my professor was the most impactful thing I could do. Before I graduated, my professor had a new faculty profile that reflected who she was and the research and teaching that were important to her.
I knew then that even small changes to your online presence could make a big impact for professors. A new faculty profile can bring you new opportunities.
Imagine what a personal website could do. A space online that you control. Something separate from the university. A website of your own where you can share your research in creative ways. Where you can invite people around the world at any time to explore what you care about.
A couple weeks after graduating with my 2nd master’s degree, I became a small business owner.
I’ve been interviewing people here on The Social Academic and talking with them about their online presence. It’s fun because we get to talk about their research and also about social media.
Today I’m going to tell you a bit about my experience with social media. I’m going to talk about some of the things I like to ask my guests.
My name is Jennifer van Alstyne. I am a Latina woman. I’m an immigrant. I’m the owner of The Academic Designer LLC.
I’m also a poet. One of my very 1st interview guests here on The Social Academic asked me how poetry impacted my work today, and I said, “It’s so much like social media.” I told him that I love form and constraint, the kind of rules that help you be more creative. That gives you a box to focus your energy.
Social media is the same way for me. Each platform whether it’s Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube which I’ve been experimenting more with recently, has its own rules. Its own constraints. I love that!
In grad school, my research focused on representations of nature in poetry. When I think about it now…Looking back, I dedicated a lot of my time studying the writing of old white men. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my research. It just didn’t help people the way I wanted. I knew I couldn’t make the kind of impact I wanted for professors if I stayed in the academy. Especially as a woman of color.
I feel much more aligned with the work I do in my company, The Academic Designer LLC, helping professors around the world share their research online. As a latina woman, I love that I get to work with professors who are making massive impact in their respective fields. And that I get to work with professors at all types of universities whether you’re at an ivy league school or a community college. I’m not limited to any single campus, which means I get to help you too!
There is one story about grad school I want to share with you. I wanted to share it with you because it’s about an award I got, one that made me feel seen. It’s something I’m so proud of. The award was from the grad student association for my academic department. 6 years ago they got together and organized personalized awards for each grad student in the program.
What was my award you ask?
I got the award for Person You Most Want To Stick Up For You In A Meeting.
I love that. That’s so meaningful to me. My graduate student association saw me as someone who will support you, stand up for you, protect you if I am able. It makes me smile, because that’s how I see myself too.
Being named Person You Most Want To Stick Up For You In A Meeting by my fellow grad students is more meaningful to me than academic and research awards. It matters more to me now than my publications. My peers saw me as someone who will stick up for you. Someone you want to stick up for you.
I feel like that’s what I do for my clients when we work together 1:1. I know we can build an amazing online presence for you together.
Actually, this was a good story to share with you because some of that anxiety when it comes to talking about yourself? I experienced that then too. And it stopped me from saying anything on social media.
I should have posted about my award then, because it made me smile.
But I was too anxious to post about myself all the time on social media. I didn’t want to come across as narcissistic. I didn’t want to make anyone feel bad.
I remember writing a post and then feeling like I had to apologize, and be like “Don’t worry – EVERYONE got an award.” Which was true. Yes.
But what mattered was how much being a Person You Most Want To Stick Up For You In A Meeting mattered to me. How warm it made me feel to be seen. To want my voice in support of yours. I counted the posts I shared that semester that might seem like bragging…I decided to delete my post.
Don’t do that. If you’re in academia, celebrate the things you care about. Share what you’ve worked hard for. Don’t hit delete like I did.
Being open to sharing your accomplishments can be easier than being open about your struggles. Or about the things in your life that aren’t so positive. I’ve definitely dealt with that before.
I was sitting in a farm-to-table Italian restaurant in Cold Spring, New York over Thanksgiving with one of my mom’s best friends Barbara and her husband Peter. We spoke about the death of my mom, when I was 13, and her struggle with prescription pill addiction and bi-polar disorder. It had been almost 15 years since I had seen Barbara and Peter.
In that time, my father had died of pneumonia after a long battle with cancer. I had escaped a physically abusive ex-husband. I found myself a young undergraduate student alone in the world struggling to find a reason to live.
Barbara was totally engrossed as I talked about my life over an endive and pomegranate salad. She had questions about what I went through, about how I survived.
She was so curious without judgment, I even told her a dark secret about my mom, Kitty, her close friend. Kitty adopted me from Peru as an infant, told me, “I never should have adopted you. It was a horrible mistake.” Twice. I was 13 when she died.
Barbara leaned in to talk more, but Peter had a solemn look on his face, now well wrinkled in his 80s. He said, “Let’s change the subject. This is the saddest story I’ve ever heard.”
The saddest story he ever heard.
He actually repeated it because Barbara asked, “What?” in surprise. The saddest story he ever heard.
That was a whole new level of seen for me. I’ve heard sadder stories than mine, now. I mean it’s never a competition. But I did often feel like I was carrying around a heavy tapestry of sad. This weight I got used to, that’s become a part of me.
I’m grateful for the therapy that got me to a place where I can talk openly about my past, without overwhelm.
But I don’t want to overwhelm anyone else. It’s probably why I’ve given you a whole lot of sad in just a few sentences. When people ask me why don’t I talk about my past, I often say because it’s too sad. I don’t want to upset people. And that has kept me from opening up with the people I care about.
Yes, there was anxiety about what people would think. Fear of judgment. Fear of what you might say about me.
But that doesn’t change that it happened to me. That it’s my life. And I can’t change it. No amount of “not telling you” will make my sad history disappear.
Not telling you relieves my anxiety. But it doesn’t help me, or you.
What I went through helps me help you better. I’ve had fear about being online. Paralyzing fear. I deleted my social media accounts after leaving a physically abusive marriage. The idea of being seen by the person I feared most kept me awake each night. I was scared to sleep. I jumped every time the phone rang. Eventually, I moved on campus where I could feel safer.
As I began to heal, I started to recognize how small I’d let my world get. I missed the friendships and larger network I’d stopped communicating with. Staying off social media altogether was no longer right for me. So I started a new Facebook account and sent out friend requests one at a time. Baby steps.
I kept being surprised when people connected. I looked deeper into my past, reaching out to childhood friends. Having so many people connect in a short timeframe made me feel good about myself because they were real people that I knew.
I started connecting with my professors, visiting writers, or people I met at events. When I presented at my 1st conference in undergrad, I connected with my fellow panelists. I moved past my fear and allowed myself to be more connected with the world.
Now I help professors build deeper connections with people online in ways that impact their research. I help them feel less isolated in the academy.
Telling my story is powerful. It may help you, or others feel seen too. Even if you judge it. Even if you judge me.
I was adopted by people who regretted adopting me.
I am a survivor of domestic violence.
I am an orphan, who had no family.
Except that I did have family. And social media became so important in connecting with them. That’s what I want to share with you next.
Having an online presence has impacted my life in many ways. I’ve been invited to speak, publish, lead workshops. My poetry has been read by more people than I’d ever imagined. My blog The Social Academic has reached you in over 191 countries around the world so far in 2023.
What’s the weirdest thing to happen to me? I was invited to audition for a reality tv show!
But the most impactful thing that has happened to me since taking my social media profiles public was being found.
Both my adoptive parents died before I went to college. It was so easy to fall out of touch with friends when you moved around like I had.
I couldn’t even afford a phone in college. Seriously. I signed up for Google Voice because I felt like I was missing out. Each person who said, “Oh, I would have texted you to meet at the dining hall, I didn’t have your number,” weighed on me.
I often feel like people forget about me. Like if I’m not there talking with you, if we haven’t seen each other in a while, I’ve dropped off the face of the earth. Like I don’t exist to you anymore.
Social media was the easiest solution for me to communicate with my friends. To keep in touch with people so they wouldn’t forget about me. So as a person alone in the world, I could still have connection.
I’m someone who needs to remind myself that “people care more about you than you think.”
It was actually through social media that my birth sister, Patssy reached out to me. I have a sister. One who has been missing me and thinking about me much of her life.
I have lots of siblings: Patssy, Veronica, Andrea, Isabella, and Leonardo.
When my sister Patssy found me, I was scared. I was still in that space of fear, with anxiety about being seen. I remember literally saying, “How did you find me?” And not knowing what to say.
Sometimes Patssy sends me videos on Facebook of her with my nieces. I get to see my little brother Leonardo on Instagram stories. And my sister Andrea and I share a love for singing. I got to hear her perform at a concert at her college in Peru when the video was posted online.
What a gift it was to connect with my family. Imagine if I hadn’t had the strength to build my online presence. Imagine if I hadn’t taken the chance to be public again on social media. My family in Peru might not have found me. The feeling Patssy had, the timing of her search for me. I had moved 11 times across 3 states since I’d been adopted as an infant. But Patssy reached out through social media and found me 27 years later.
Social media has changed my life. I know it can change yours too.
OK so maybe a long lost sister isn’t going to reach out to you from across the world. But more people are going to care about you.
When you’re more open about yourself, you invite people to engage with what you care about too (like your teaching and research).
Having an online presence can help you connect with people around the world. More people care about you and your research than you think.
Help them by having an online presence that invites them to connect with you. When people Google your name, you want them to find a bit about you. Things like your bio, a photo of you. Can they learn about your research? Do you have a website that helps them explore it further?
I’m here to help you with your online presence. I have lots of free resources on The Social Academic blog to help you get started.
I’m here to help you, so don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected] or on social media @HigherEdPR.
If this episode touched you, send me a direct message. Share The Social Academic on social media with your friends. Getting an email or DM from you just makes my day, so I would absolutely love a message. I’d love to hear from you.
When you’re a professor, you may feel unsure what path to take for your online presence.
Do you need a website? A LinkedIn profile (even when you’re not job searching)? A new bio for your faculty profile? Maybe you’ve been wanting to build your social media skills. But is that where you should start?
Let’s chat on Zoom if a stronger online presence is a goal you in 2024. I’m happy to see how we might work together. Professors, you deserve an online presence you’re confident in.
Here are my top picks for professors, researchers, and grad students like you. I hope these gift ideas inspire you.
Map of readers of The Social Academic blog in 2022
Get my top recommendations for professional development and wellbeing.
Thanks so much for visiting The Social Academic blog. People from 175 countries around the world took time to read this year. I am so grateful for you.
Echo Rivera, PhD brings you a 2 hour masterclass that helps you take your presentation slides from mediocre to memorable. I’ve benefited from Echo’s training myself. I highly recommend it.
How to Design an Award-Winning Scientific Poster course
I got to chat with Tullio Rossi, PhD of Animate Your Science last month about his scientific poster course. I knew I just had to share it with you. Have an engaging poster for your next conference.
Teach the Geek to Speak Society
Neil Thompson knows public speaking is hard. If you’re in STEM, you need to know how to communicate effectively about your research. Get the Teach the Geek to Speak course program with live monthly coaching calls.
Academic and Scientific Writing
Scholarship Success Collective
Lisa Munro, PhD says, “How would you like to have the community support, structure, accountability, and actual writing instruction you need to get your article written and published so you can start helping us think about the world in new ways even if you’re full of crippling self-doubt about your writing and ideas?” Join the Scholarship Success Collective. This workshop runs January 16/17-April 16/17.
The Researchers’ Writing Academy course
Anna Clemens, PhD has a course to help you write clear scientific papers for high-ranking STEM journals. If you’re in the physical, health, life, and earth sciences, this step-by-step system is the only course in scientific writing you’ll ever need.
Write your book with Dr. Jane Jones
A program for women in academia to write your book. Stop staring at a blank page wondering what you’re supposed to write. Build your writing skills and practice with support. Dr. Jane Jones of Up In Consulting is here to help you push through the doubt and uncertainty so you get your book written. Join Elevate because you don’t have to write your book alone.
Teaching
Teaching College Ultimate Bundle Access
Get Norman Eng, EdD’s top resources for engaging students online and offline. This bundle pack of shows you the step-by-step methods you need.
Connecting with the Public and Media
Power Your Research program
Do you want major media coverage? Sheena Howard, PhD shares proven strategies to land features in the L.A. Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and more. Get more visibility for your research.
LinkedIn profile challenge
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Join professors around the world in my training to Update Your LinkedIn Profile for Professors and Researchers.
This training helps you have an amazing LinkedIn profile!
Josie Ahlquist, PhD brings you a self-paced course on digital leadership for Higher Education executives. Learn social media strategy to connect with your campus community online.
Academic Careers and Leaving Academia
The Art of the Academic Cover Letter course
Are you applying for academic jobs? Learn how to write a cover letter for your academic job application. Showcase your record and stand out in the academic job market with this course from Karen Kelsky, PhD. If you don’t already have it, The Professor Is In book is a must read. You’ll need it for the course.
PhD Career Clarity Program
Confidently market yourself for the jobs you actually want with Jennifer Polk, PhD’s PhD Career Clarity Program. Dr. Polk has been a career coach for PhDs since 2013.
If you need help getting clarity on your post academic career, this is the program for you. My fiancé loved this program. It may be great for you too!
I’ve met so many professors and graduate students running a business. If you want to build a business on part-time hours Cheryl Lau has 1:1 and Group Coaching programs for you. Psst! Cheryl has been my business coach since December 2022.
Retreats and Conferences
The Grad School Success Summit replays (virtual) FREE
Are you in graduate school? Do you know someone heading to grad school in the new year? This virtual summit has great sessions on school-life balance, wellness, and more. Get ready with a boost of motivation brought to you by Allanté Whitmore of the Blk + In Grad School podcast. You’ll get free access to the replays (including my session on How to Manage Your Online Presence in Grad School).
Books
25 Ways to Say ‘No’ in A Professional Way
Having a difficult time saying ‘no’ in the workplace? Here’s how to communicate in a professional and confident way.
This digital download is from Dr. Monica Cox.
Stronger Than You Think: The 10 Blind Spots That Undermine Your Relationship and How to See Past Them
Whether you’re in grad school, teaching, or in the lab, relationships can be hard. Appreciate the love you have, or find the one you want and deserve. Dr. Gary Lewandowski Jr. is an expert on relationships. This is a book I read last year I think is great for academics. I learned a lot, and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Laziness Does Not Exist
Dr. Devon Price used to believe that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Now they dive into the history and origins of the ‘laziness lie.’ It goes back to the Puritans! Most of us feel like we’re not doing enough even though people today do more work than other humans in history. My friends recommended this to me and now I’m sharing it with you!
Cate Adamson is working on her doctorate in New York under an impossible, sexist advisor. She struggles until she discovers a hidden painting. Is it a masterpiece? Join Cate’s journey to Spain as she uncovers an art mystery.
PhD Balance is a community creating space for graduate students to openly discuss mental health. Join the community for access to webinars, challenges, and conversation.
The Personal Finance for PhDs Community
Emily Roberts, PhD sets you up for success with your personal finances. From paying down debt to taxes, this community helps PhDs make the most of your money.
Game
Dead Theorists: A Card Game
A satirical card game for philosophers and aspiring academics for 2-4 players.
Other Gift Ideas for Academics
Professional memberships to associations and organizations
Support the academic in your life with an annual membership to a professional organization or association in their field. For graduate students especially, this is a valuable line on their CV that opens their world to new conferences and networking opportunities.
Money towards professional development activities
Help a professor, researcher, or graduate student gain professional development with money for
Conferences
Award submission
Research travel
Working with a coach
Joining a training or course
A spa day
Give the gift of relaxation with a day at the spa. A hot stone massage can help relieve those post-semester grading muscle aches.
A weekend away
Sometimes the best gift is a night away. Take a trip and leave the work behind for the ultimate weekend getaway.
To
understand my stories is useful to know that law faculties, like most others,
are assigned to committees. There are committees assigned to propose
candidates to be hired, committees to approve new courses, committees to review
candidates for tenure and promotion. Some committees make long range plans,
some study how to increase publications. The one I am on this year is called
Academic standards. We typically handle appeals from students when something
has been declined by an administrator. For example, a student can take a course
at another law school and transfer the credit as long as they got a C. Those
whoget a D or lower, which takes more
effort than making a B, invariable appeal to Academic Standards to have the
grade transferred.
Today
the committee metand had two appeals I
had never encountered before. One was from a student who had just finished the
first year of school and had received and A in Contract Law. She complained
that the A grade, the highest you could get, was unfairly granted. Her story
was that in the class she had become friendly with the teacher Ed Freddy, who
we all refer to a Mr. Freddy. The friendliness led to lunch which led to dinner
(all without the knowledge of Mrs. Freddy) and well you can guess where this is
going.
They had falling out somewhere near the end of the semester and their fling was
over.Then the final exam came. In law
school in most courses the final exam determines the grade for the entire
semester. She took the exam and received her grade which, as I mentioned was an
A. Her petition to us was that she only got and A because of the “services” she
supplied to Mr. Freddy and that rather be treated like a prostitute she wanted
a grade no higher than a B. We tabled this case until our next meeting to give
a chance to evaluate her final exam ourselves.
Our
second appeal today was equally bizarre. First you have to understand that law
schools and other University department hire visitors who teach for a semester
or ayear are not on the permanent
faculty. Last year we hired Mary McCan to teach for a
semester. She was young, an average teacher, ambitious, frumpy-looking, andlonely in our small college town.According to the petition on the last night
of finals she when out with a few students including the petitioner and she
broughtone of them home with her. They
were evidently quite drunk. According to the student, when he got ready to leave she
blocked the door. In his words he then “obliged her as a courtesy”. The student
got a B in the course and complained he did not deserve a B. In his words he did
not know if he had “he’d fucked himself up from a C or down from an A.” He said
that neither was acceptable and he wanted us to read his paper to determine if
he deserved either and A or a C, which he was willing to accept.
In his classic 1967 article on rent-seeking (which does not actually use the term because it had not been coined at that time) Gordon Tullock explained that the cost of theft was not that one person’s property was taken by another. In fact, that transaction in isolation may increase welfare. The social costs were the reactions of those attempting to avoid theft and those refining their skills. Richard Posner extended the analysis when he wrote about the costs of monopoly. Again, it was not that some became richer at the expense of others but that enormous sums were invested in bringing about the redistribution. In neither case do the rent seeking, social-cost-producing efforts create new wealth.
Still, in the case of Tullock and Posner the social costs were at least about something. There was a “there” there in the form of a chunk of wealth to bicker over. But now we come to law professors and law schools.
Law professor efforts to self-promote have exploded. Included are repeated visits to the Dean asking for one thing or another, resume padding, massive mailings of reprints, posting SSRN download rankings, or, even better, emailing 200 friends asking them to download a recently posted article, churning out small symposia articles because deans often want to see lines on resumes as opposed to substance, playing the law review placement game, and just plain old smoozing ranging from name dropping to butt kissing. Very little of this seems designed to produce new wealth. If fact, think of the actual welfare-producing activities that could be undertaken with the same levels of energy — smaller classes, more sections of needed courses, possibly even research into areas that are risky in terms of self promotion but could pay off big if something new or insightful were discovered or said. But this is the part that puzzles me. Whether the thief in Tullock’s case or monopolist in Posner’s, the prize is clear. What is the prize for law professors? Are these social costs expended to acquire rents that really do not exist or are only imagined? What are the rents law professors seek?
Law schools make the professors look like small potatoes when it comes to social costs. Aside from hiring their own graduates to up the employment level, they all employ squads of people whose jobs are to create social costs (of course, most lawyers do the same thing), produce huge glossy magazines that go straight to the trash, weasel around with who is a first year student as opposed to a transfer student or a part time student, select students with an eye to increasing one rating or another, and obsess over which stone is yet unturned in an effort to move up a notch. I don’t need to go through the whole list but the point is that there is no production — nothing socially beneficial happens. That’s fine. The same is true of Tullock’s thief and Posner’s monopolist. But again, and here is the rub. What is the rent the law schools seek? Where is the pie that they are less interested in making bigger than in just assuring they get the biggest slice possible? What is it made of?
At least thieves and monopolists fight over something that exists. And they often internalize the cost of that effort. Law professors and law schools, on the other hand, may be worse. They do not know what the prize actually is; they just know they should want more; and the costs are internalized by others.
For most law professors
I have known, life is an extended negotiation to advance one’s self interest. They
are their own clients. Their constant obsession about where they rank means a
complete lack of humility and the use of certain devices. The most common device
is to show no weakness. This leads to a number of things. One is to never seen to care very much about something, at least publicly. To show you really want
something is to reveal a weakness. For example, when I was chair of the appointments
committee, I asked members of
the committee who wanted to go to the meat market. This duty is something that
is usually coveted by mid or early career professors. No one said he or she wanted to go in the meeting. In a few hours after
that, every member of the committee called me privately to say they were
“willing to go.”
This leads to the
volunteer scam. Law professors never want to demand to do something — — they
volunteer. When you volunteer it is not like you wanted something but you were willing
to help out. Helping out, in this life long negotiation, means you are owed.
For example, one of the plums of my teaching career was to be appointed to
summer abroad teaching program. One year the person who was set to go could not
go at the last minute. I called the person running the program to see if I
could go instead. I was informed it would not be necessary because the head of
the program had “volunteered” to take on the assignment himself.
Another part of not
showing weakness is to try to get others to do work that might expose your own
weakness. This means office to office visits and indirection. Let’s say you
think someone who has been appointed to chair a committee is an awful choice.
You would go office to offices saying something like “what did you think of
those committee assignments.” In other words, you throw out the bait and see if
anyone bites. Eventually, you might find some people saying they were
disappointed and then you roam the halls saying to others “I heard that
several people are upset with that committee assignment.” You say “several” even if it is one. Note, you do not say
you are upset but that others are. You, of course, just want to be fair.
There are also ways of
disagreeing. Suppose Jack at a faculty meeting proposes that teachers have more
office hours than currently required. You hate the idea but you do not raise
your hand and say so. Instead you say something like “It’s wonderful to be
available to students but I have “concerns” about Jack’s proposal or “if gives
me pause.” These are ways of saying “that is the dumbest thing I have every
heard”
No matter what, you
are too busy. You have students, exams to write, phone calls to return, and
papers to grade. In reality you may be on Amazon looking for a new toaster or
frying pan. You may take a nap. But you never admit to anything other than
being overwhelmed with how much work you have.
Being sneaky is
important. You do not write down what you could say. If it is written down you
have accountability. If you say it, then if it is passed along you can claim you were misunderstood or taken out of
context.
Working the students
for high teaching evaluations. You can do this by being funny or radiating your
deep concern for their well-being. It does not hurt to bring cookies when their
evaluations of you are distributed. One neat ploy a colleague freely admitted
was designed to help is evaluations was passing out his own evaluation form
before the official. This communicate that you value the opinion of the
students and more or less lets them vent if they are inclined to as a way of
lowering the chance they will unload on you on the official evaluations.
Information among law
faculty is power. If you have it, you can dispense it in the way that best
serves your ends. It may be rumor, it maybe something that has very little
foundation. Important things are generally bad news about someone else – their
article got rejected, they failed an interview at another school, the Provost
is angry with the Dean. You can use the information as currency and you spend it
to get what you want – usually that is a reaction that advances whatever is in
your self interest.
Law professors call
what they do “scholarship.” It almost never is. You could count on one had the
number of times a law professor actually tries to find the answer to an
important question. Instead, consistent with their training they are advocates
for their own notions of what should be. Their research skills are limited and
the idea of putting anything to an empirical test is frightening to them. You might compare this with seeing a doctor. Usually you tell the doctor the symptoms and he or she tries to match with with a cause, Suppose instead you walked into the doctor and he or she said “you have typhoid fever” and then ignored every thing you said except those things that were consistent with typhoid fever. That’s legal scholarship.
