Confercationing is when law professors claim to be going to a conference on the law school’s dime but are really on a
one to 5 day vacation. The biggest on of these for law professors takes place
in early January when the Association of American Legal Schools meet. Not as
big but easily a bigger boondoggle is the Southeastern Association of Law Teachers Conference
which conveniently takes place in the summer in a family friendly location. Palm
Beach is a favorite destination as is Orlando. Since Universities pay for
transportation, meals, and lodging for faculty, the only cost to the vacationer and his or her family is transportation for the partner and kids and their meals. Pretty good deal for a week in Florida. I will say this about this meeting. There is very little hypocrisy. No one attending pretends to be doing anything other than vacationing on the school’s dime.
Three things characterize
these meetings. Since law professors are, by nature, climbers whenever you are
talking to someone at these meetings they are always looking over your shoulder to
see if there is someone more important in the room they could attempt to smooze
with. The second is a contest over who know the best ethic restaurant in town.
So people with gather in hyped up groups decided were to go eat. The discussion
invariable comes down to who know the hippest place to go that no one else has
discovered. Third, at these conferences members of a panel present papers to groups ranging from 0 to 50. After the presentation people can
ask questions The questions rarely indicate something the questioner wants to
know but is for the questioner to impress the rest of the audience with how
much they should be reckoned with. It’s actually pretty easy to seem impressive
because the papers are almost always duds. The papers drawn from already published articles or
recycled from previous talks. The main idea is be able to put on your resume
that you presented a paper at such and such a meeting.
These conferences are pretty much a waste in terms of
producing anything for the money spend but there is a even bigger sham than these two main conferences. These are the manufactured conferences, Someone gets the
idea to have a conference on British contract law or South American
Comparative. The law school provides a grant that could be used for almost
anything else that would be more useful.
The conferences always take place in exotic places; not some small retreat
where there is little to do but actually confer but in Rio, London, Amsterdam,
Geneva, Paris, etc.
Here is an example of one
of these manufactured conferences:
International
Conference on Latin American Issues
Rio de Janerio
June 10, 2015
Friday June 10
8:30 AM Coffee and
Pastries in the Lobby
9:30-10.30 AM Session 1. Evolution of the
Peruvian Constitution, Room 23
Co
Chairs: Eve St. John, Berta Hurns, Georgio Penata, Julio Peso, J.J. Fields
Presenters:
Coby
Claster: Early Peru
Sylvia
Macado: Peru After the Early Years
Paco
Smith: Peru in the 1930s: Penises
Joan
Streeter: Peru and Constitutional Reform
Miquel
Mendoza: Consolidation
Audience
comments and questions
10:40
– 11:40 Session 2. Brazilian
International Policy, Room 56
Co
Chairs: Zeke Palmer, Ted Crammer, Luigi Longo, Roberto Santos, Carmen Zips
Presenters:
Lonnie
Funk: Brazil and Slavery
Festus
Johan: Brazil and Argentina: History and Perspectives.
Chester
Bores: Brazil and Acai: The Importance of the Smoothy
Constance
Vaya: Brazil in 2024
Pepe
Vargus: Looking Forward
Audience
Comments
11:40
– 1:00 Lunch: Box Lunches Provided in the Lobby
[there
are also two afternoon sessions, a time for a reception and then dinner at a
posh restaurant]
This looks pretty good, right? Maybe
even interesting. But let’s take a closer look. Notice the location. Rio! Who
does not want to go to Rio. Since the airfare is the same if you stay one day
or two weeks, no one in his right mind would only be going to the conference.
So this has convercationing all over it.
You may also notice the number of co
chairs of each session. A Chair is someone who contacts and schedules the
panels. Having 5 co chairs is a sure sign of a boondoggle. Each co chair can
list on his or her resume that they were a co chair without revealing that they did
next to nothing and also justify the law school footing the bill. Perhaps
their duties involved making one phone call to ask something else if he or she
too could be a co chair.
Now look at each session. They have
5 speakers. The session is an hour long. Take some time for introductions and
then some time for audience questions and the speakers are left with about 40
minutes to present their “papers.” That’s 8 minutes each. So let’s say the
airfare is about $1200. Two nights at a Rio hotel is $400 and meals, say, $100 a
day. Is an 8 minute talk or listening to other 8 minute talks worth $1700. Put
it another way. Each session has a total of 10 people involved and there are 4
sessions for the one day conference. That comes out to 40 people at $1700 each
or $108,000 for participants costs only not counting any charge for the rooms
and meals. There actually may also be a fee to attend.
You will notice that there is time
for audience participation. What audience? There is actually no audience other than the people who are participating on other sessions who may or may not show up for anything other than their own 8 minutes, It’s not like a show for
the purpose of advancing the understanding of anything by anybody. In fact, I
personally have been a panelists when there was no audience at all. But the
school still paid for my confercation. Thanks, taxpayers!