Amid Scandal and Political Protests: A University President Goes Down

Beyond legitimately taking credit and assuming blame for a myriad of things, a university president ought first of all to be an academic scholar, which comes with the credential of a doctorate in a field or school of knowledge. Rather than a specific body, or school, of knowledge subject to research (and thus growth) being directly applicable to the position, I contend that the process, which includes being enculturated in academia as a scholar, of getting a doctorate is valuable and thus should be requisite to a candidate being selected to lead a college or university. In short, a university president is not just a manager. It would be expedient, in line with committing the “sin of omission,” to have a corporate executive, or, even more expedient, a lawyer, run a university. The governing board of Northwestern University in Illinois committed this “sin” in hiring Michael Schill, a law instructor, as president of that university. Just three years after assuming the position in September, 2022, he abruptly resigned. A memo to that board upon his resignation announcement could read: “Memo to the Board: Yale Law School trains lawyers, not university presidents.”

Even though Schill attended two elite universities, Princeton and Yale, his two respective degrees were “first degrees”—one in liberal arts and the other in law. Hence he did not have a doctorate, which is a terminal (rather than first) degree in a school of knowledge. For the confused, the JD degree is the same as the LLB (bachelors in the letters of law) degree whereas the LLM is the masters degree in law and the JSD is the associated doctoral degree, for which both the LLB/JD and LLM are prerequisites. Plain and simply, a year (up to two) of survey lecture courses and a year (up to two) of survey courses mark an entrance into the knowledge rather than years of advanced seminar study—not to mention the absence of comprehensive exams (not the Bar exam, which is vocational rather than a university requirement for a degree) and a dissertation—the latter two being essential in a doctoral degree. Besides being qualitatively different than survey courses and some seminar-electives, the process of getting a doctorate, which is on top of having a bachelors and a masters degree, “socializes” a student into academic culture, which students in a first degree in a professional school or that of the arts and sciences do not get. Both in assisting in teaching and research, doctoral students are absorbed into a university not just as students and part-time apprentice-employees, but also as budding scholars themselves. Internalizing the values of academia and its unique culture also happens by osmosis.

As a scholar myself, it is difficult for me to put myself in the place of a lawyer to grasp how one leading a university would perceive and react to political protests on campus. Although Schill studied public policy at Princeton, he was apparently not up to managing the university’s response to “the freeze of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding” to Northwestern by the Trump Administration, for that was a significant factor in his decision to resign.[1] A scholar having successfully gone through the process of earning a doctorate would—other things equal—have a better notion of how the role of student at a college or university is unique to education; students holding protests on campus against Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, which includes genocide and maybe even a holocaust, should be seen as evincing academic freedom of ideas, rather than just as citizens (and foreign students) being engaged in the constitutional right of political protest. In short, student protests can be viewed as learning experiences, such that university administrations could see to it that faculty who are favorably inclined speak as much to educate as to advocate at protests on campus. A lawyer is not likely to view a political protest on campus as a temporary “practical classroom experience.”

Schill’s lack of scholarly credentials (and related academic maturating experience) also bear on another reason behind his resignation. In July 2023, Northwestern fired football coach Pat Fitzgerald “amid a hazing scandal that led to lawsuits across multiple sports with allegations including sexual abuse by teammates as well as racist comments by coaches and race-based assaults.”[2] At least some of that atrocious behavior occurred under Schill’s watch. As a lawyer, he would naturally have been most concerned about the lawsuits that sprang up like tulips in spring. It should come as no surprise at all that Northwestern hired a law firm to do a review of the scandal, and, furthermore, that the report by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison was “largely positive” for Northwestern, with a lawyerly subordinate clause noting that investigators found room for improvement in preventing hazing.[3] Most importantly, and hardly accidental, having room for improvement does not acknowledge any negligence or liability. All of us have room for improvement; this is the human condition.

Attempting to obviate lawsuit payouts by means of carefully crafting wording is very different indeed from how a scholar would look at the situation and react (with hired lawyers to take care of the legalese). That students were being harmed, in some cases severely and whether by coaches or fellow students, has academic importance not just in terms of the impacts on academic study, but also in terms of the wider picture of students being in the care of universities other than in the sense of being subordinate or just as customers.

This can be seen in the live-in directors of on-campus dorms in which young-adult students live, having almost a parental role in terms of disciplining bad behavior. A dorm contract is not just a lease, and the occupants are not just tenants. The “something more” is what I’m getting at here, and this is familiar to people who have gone through doctoral programs in which students become scholars in the midst of academic culture. Once I applied to be a dorm director at a university; I was naïve enough to think that my MBA would be sufficient; the university wanted candidates who had a masters in education (counseling). That was before I became a scholar and could thus realize how a university is so much more in a distinctly academic sense, and thus as something more organizationally than just having business elements. Both such elements, and legal elements, are not primary, so hiring lawyers (or business executives) to head universities is not wise, and universities are presumably ultimately about knowledge as wisdom, rather than about training in skills.

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1. Annie Ma, “Northwestern University President Says He Will Resign Following Tenure Marked by White House Tension,” The Associated Press, September 4, 2025.
2. Andrew Seligman, “Investigators Recommend Northwestern Enhance Hazing Prevention Training,” The Associated Press, September 4, 2025.
3. Ibid.

Some Academic Degrees Are Not So High: Is Your Degree Overvalued?

American higher education contains its own erroneous nomenclature. Most notably, people having earned one degree in law or medicine are told even by their schools that the degree is doctorates.  Common sense alone can point out that merely three or four years of courses in an academic discipline do not a doctorate make, especially considering that the first year or two consist of survey courses (i.e., courses that survey the different areas in a subject rather than go into depth). That having a prior bachelor’s degree is a required does not mean that the first degree in law, medicine, or divinity is advanced, for the prior degree is not in those schools (of knowledge). For instance, a person can go to a law school in America with a BA in English. Even if a person in one's first degree in medicine, the MD, has earned a prior degree in biochemistry, that subject is not medicine and thus is not relied on. I was surprised when a medical student told me that very little of even his bio-chemistry major was taught to the first-degree medical students. Hence medical students can major in different subjects without being at a disadvantage in the survey courses in the first degree in medical schools. 

Why, then, does admittance into a divinity, law, or medical school require a prior degree in another subject? The answer is not academic; rather, it lies in American political philosophy (which would not be a bad major prior to going to law school). The American founders, realizing that the American electorate, the popular sovereign, would be playing a decisive role in the new representative democracy, wanted citizens to be broadly educated. Judgments in casting votes would benefit from having knowledge beyond one school of knowledge, or specialization because political judgments are not technocratic. 

So first-degree law students (i.e., in a LLB aka JD program) have made a lateral rather than upward move after receiving a first degree in another school (e.g., Liberal Arts and Sciences).  Therefore, studying for a second university degree does not necessarily mean that it is graduate. To be so, the degree must not be the first in a given school, like medicine or law.

As an aside, I went to Yale to study theology, history, and philosophy (and film) by enrolling in the masters of divinity degree program. The M.Div., being the first degree in the school of divinity, is actually the undergraduate degree of divinity schools. The degree was labeled the B.D. until 1968 at Yale, when even thought the knowledge-content and courses did not change, all of a sudden graduates of that first degree in a divinity school had M.Div.s: masters of divinity. Mine actually labels the degree as a masters of theology, so the M.Div. may be a misnomer in two respects. But my degree from Yale is not a masters in substance, and I, apparently unlike some students before me, am just fine with two bachelors degrees. That the M.Div degree is the prerequisite for the STM degree (Masters in Sacred Theology) at Yale should be enough of an indication that the M.Div degree is not really a masters. The hierarchy of degrees within a school (or academic discipline) consists in ascending order of the bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree. Before 1968, a Yale divinity student graduating with a BD would have had no problem understanding that the next step would be the STM degree, followed by the DD (Harvard's divinity school offers the Th.D. too; the DD being more practitioner and less research oriented). 

Regarding the academic coursework requirements of the first degrees in divinity/theology, law, and medicine, the inclusion of the survey courses typically in the first half of the program should be enough to indicate that the students are at the beginning stage of obtaining knowledge in the given subject, and a year or two of seminars on top correlate with a junior and senior year of a person's first college degree[1]. Yet this point is conveniently missed or arrogantly dismissed by so many ministers/priests, physicians and lawyers whose professional degrees have been granted by universities in America. The ignorance of something so visible and arrogant presumption based on false-entitlement, like arrogance on stilts during a flood, are without foundation and yet they last, reinforced not only in the respective professions, but even by all but a few of those professional schools at American universities.

A doctorate must be a terminal degree (i.e., the highest degree possible in a given school of knowledge, such as divinity, law, medicine, and liberal arts and sciences). A doctoral program must include a comprehensive exam prior to graduation, and thus given by professors rather than an industry board after graduation. Thirdly, a dissertation of substantial original research must be turned in and approved by a committee of the faculty. For many disciplines (excluding math and natural science), a dissertation is book-length. So the thesis of a first-degree medical, law, or liberal arts and sciences student would not suffice. 

Furthermore, residency in a hospital, clerking for a judge, or being a postulate for the priesthood in a Christian denomination do not turn a first degree in medicine, law, and divinity, respectively, into a doctorate. I informed two physicians at a church of this, and their anger flared as they held stubbornly to their ignorance, perhaps due to the cultural esteem put on their profession or an erroneous statement made by a supervising physician or even a medical school administrator. Again, common sense would tell the two physicians that what is done after graduation AND not even at the university is exogenous to the degree itself that has already been granted. I was stunned, and more than just a little worried, that people charged with saving lives could be so stupid and lack common sense. 

Some physicians and lawyers have told me that the MD and JD, respectively, are considered doctorates because the particular university does not offer the doctorate. A doctoral degree is a doctorate whether a particular university grants one or not; the bachelors degree (i.e., MD and JD) does not become a doctorate simply because a university doesn't offer the doctorate. Schools that don't offer the doctorate in law (i.e., the JSD) do not add coursework, a comprehensive exam (which is distinct from the bar exam, which is extrinsic to a law school and after graduation), and a dissertation onto the three years of coursework (survey courses and seminars) of a JD degree. Again, looking at the academic program is vital to grasping whether a degree is a bachelors, masters, or doctorate. 

The answer to why most American medical and law schools do not offer their respective doctoral degrees hinges on the vaunted hyper-extended status of the two (wealthy) professions in American culture. Whereas in the E.U., a doctorate in law is required in order to become a tenured professor of law, law professors in the U.S. need only have the first degree (i.e., undergraduate) in law. Sometimes truth can be straight in front of a person and yet be for all intents and purposes invisible. Put another way, sometimes people have incredible difficult in "connecting the dots" when the line is clear as day. It likely would come as a shock to virtually every American that law and medical professors in the U.S. rarely have more than a year or two of survey classes and another year or two of seminars--without there even being a concentration, or major! A law journal with articles by professors holding two undergraduate degrees can demonstrate the writing (and editing) level that could be expected of a college graduate, rather than someone holding a doctorate (with a dissertation!). Reading articles on federalism in law journals, I found that pieces of ninety pages could easily and more concisely be thirty, and I won't get into the grammar and sentence structure. 

How did the Americans get themselves in such a mess? In short, students complained about going seven or eight years in college with only two bachelors-level degrees. Changing the names of degrees without changing their academics is itself dubious or suspicious of an ulterior motive when the "B" gets changed to a "M" or even a "D." 

The case of law schools is illustrative. In law schools, the JD (Juris Doctor, which is distinct from Doctorate) name of the first degree in that professional school began to replace LLB (Bachelors in the Letters of Law) name (only) at the founding of a law school at the University of Chicago in 1893. The college's administration (aka marketers) decided to change the name to attract students. The comparative advantage stemmed from the fact that prospective law students generally did not like the fact that seven years of college resulted in two bachelors degrees (e.g., BA and LLB). Changing the name of the degree did not make it a doctorate, so the "D" for doctor in "JD" was misleading, and thus unethical. The doctorate of law is the JSD (Doctorate in Juridical Science). The masters (LLM), stands between the undergraduate (i.e., first degree in the school) JD (or LLB) degree and the doctorate. Again, we can refer to common sense, which raises eyebrows at the fact that a Juris Doctor degree is a prerequisite for admission into a Masters in the Letters of Law (LLM) program. 

Similarly, the doctorate in Medicine is the DSciM. (Doctorate in the Science of Medicine). The MD degree is a prerequisite, hence it cannot be a terminal degree in medicine—the DSciM. is higher). The "D" in the MD stands for doctor whereas the "D" in the DSciM stands for doctorate. Physicians are typically called doctors, but are never called doctorates. Even though subtle, this distinction is vital to understanding the qualitative difference between the two degrees; only one is a graduate degree in medical schools, even if a particular university does not offer the degree, whereas the other degree is the undergraduate degree in medicine. "Undergraduate" does not refer only to a person's first college degree, but, is relative to the school of knowledge being studied. In the U.S., this point is virtually unknown, which is staggering because common sense alone should make clear that a year or two of survey courses and one or two more of narrower subjects (within those surveyed) are not advanced in terms of the knowledge in a given academic field or school (of knowledge). 

Even in the face of all this, the self-vaunting lawyer or physician is apt to presume that he or she has in fact earned a doctorate, and ministers or priests holding the M.Div degree typically belies any claim to humility by claiming a graduate degree in theology for just three years of study!  

More abstractly, error itself may even be presumed to have a certain right to an over-reaching hegemony over knowledge in a society in which higher education is not valued in itself. Too often the case, American universities have come to be confined to fitting the criteria of vocation rather than education. Just because lawyers and physicians in private practice make enough money to be in the upper-middle economic stratum does not mean that their practitioner-degrees have the status of advanced scholarly degrees. 

Furthermore, American law and medical schools need not dilute themselves by continuing to grant tenure to people holding two undergraduate degrees. Shifting laterally from one school of knowledge to another does not make a student a scholar of either one. Yet the credibility of tenured professors of law and medicine is well ensconced in even the most elite of American universities. Even they have undercut academia  in the service of other values in American society. Even those universities can be characterized as having voluntarily weakened themselves. Those that know what the degrees mean are particularly blameworthy, for they know what they are doing and they do it anyway! 

Yale's law school's academic administrators, for instance, know that the JD degree is an undergraduate degree, and yet the vast majority of tenured law professors there only have the one degree in law. A few might have the Ph.D. degree, but that degree would be in another academic discipline (not in law). and going sideways doesn't count the same as having the doctorate in law (i.e., the JSD) among the school's faculty. 

It is hardly a feat of human nature that the human brain can so utterly fail to see what lies visible just ahead. Such is the warping effect that group-think (or culture more generally) can have. Even in seeking the truth, it may remain elusive to even the most innocent. Add pride and vested interest to the mix and the visible can conveniently remain as though invisible. 

Epilogue

"I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps . . . The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling. But once we caught on, . . . "[2]

1. A person's first college degree may be in a college of liberal arts and sciences or one of the professional schools (e.g., business, engineering, pharmacy, education, nursing) except for law, medicine, and divinity. Hence a first college degree can be distinguished from the first degree of a professional school even though the latter is also a bachelors degree. According to the registrar at Yale's law school, and the book she "had me read" (in typical Yale fashion), the first degree in a school/college is the undergraduate in that school/college. Hence, the graduate programs at Yale's law school consist of those for the LLM and JSD degrees, but not the JD degree. "That's our undergraduate degree," the registrar said of the JD (or LLB) degree. I had been puzzled why the JD (or LLB) was not in the Graduate Programs Office. 

2. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: Mariner Books, 1974), p. 13. 

A Law School Dean Offers Grief Counseling to "Hysterical" Students after Trump Wins: Legal Reasoning Suffers

Michael Schwartz, dean of the law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock announced in November, 2016 that he would resign the following summer. His accomplishments included a lawyer-student mentoring program, live-client learning sessions, and a low-income clinic in the Arkansas Delta.[1] The trigger for his resignation was a school-wide email he had sent to students just days earlier in which he announced that he was making counseling available to any student who was upset by the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President. Besides effectively normalizing over-reactions and failing to recognize normal venting, the dean’s email interjected partisan politics, albeit tacitly, into higher education. Rather than turn the popularized context into a teachable moment for assumption-analysis, the dean modeled what happens when unsupported assumptions run unchecked. In the end, the legal reasoning of students could suffer.

“For those of you who feel upset,” the dean wrote, “we have arranged extra on-campus counseling services today.”[2] Ironically, the dean who was taken up by the politics of the day instructed his law students (who in America are older as they already have one undergraduate college degree), “No matter how you are feeling, the most important thing for you is to focus on your studies.”[3] The dean’s assumption was that the outcome of the 2016 presidential election was unique in this regard, for another professor at the school, Robert Steinbuch, noted at the time that he could not recall the dean’s office offering grief counseling after Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012. “I knew plenty of people who were disappointed,” Steinbuch observed, “but I didn’t know anybody [who] needed grief counseling. I think when we tell people that they need some form of grief counseling we are normalizing hysteria and suggesting there’s something immoral or wrong about our democratic process.”[4] I suspect that the normalization of the hysteria was aided by the intolerant political-correctness movement (i.e., how dare you accuse me of hysteria!). The dean was unwittingly facilitating the tacit demand for the normalization by normalizing the hysteria himself. Even the venting, which in itself is quite normal, can succumb to the demand that it be treated as something else, as if each of the vented grievances is valid rather than an over-reaction based on overblown assumptions.

The dean could have turned the attention on the election into a teachable moment by conveying to students how valuable critiquing assumptions can be when they are based on heightened emotions. Legal reasoning is presumably better when it is not at the mercy of high-charged emotions. Instead, the dean himself overextended his own assumptions—namely, that minorities would be attacked and not valued simply because Donald Trump won the election. “Our diversity is a strength and a goal that we need to cultivate in every way we can,” he wrote as if that needed all of a sudden to be said.[5] “Everyone deserves a safe, supportive, collegial learning environment,” he insisted.[6] Had reports indicated that the safety of the school would be compromised? “Please reach out to your peers and let them know they are valued.”[7] Did this include Republican peers? Furthermore, if some students were not feeling valued, maybe what they really needed to hear—for their own good—is that their inner feelings of value should not depend on external circumstances. Lastly, presumably without any evidence—a legal term—of any student being mistreated, the dean added, “And, if you witness someone being mistreated because of his or her politics, religious beliefs, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender, please do not sit silently by.”[8] It is odd that after the campaign season the dean would assume that political mistreatment would be an issue. Even if Donald Trump has personal views on particular religions, races, ethnic groups, and homosexuality, to assume that students would begin mistreating each other is a stretch, to say the least, and that presumes that the dean knew Trump’s personal views. I submit that the dean was simply laying out the laundry list of partisan causes—going well beyond even the issues then at hand. In other words, the dean was representing a partisan position whose Democratic candidate(s) had lost.

Even in ideologically overextending his reach by “warning” his students, the power-seeking dean modelled how unchecked assumptions can result in muddled reasoning. That he presented such “reasoning” as sound and valid meant that the students’ own cognitive lapses were enabled. He did nothing to improve the students’ legal reasoning, but maybe the underlying problem is that he was not oriented to legal education as per the contents of his email. I submit that a dean has an obligation in leading a school to stay on point in the sense of focusing on the dissemination of knowledge, which includes sharpening reasoning abilities. Put another way, good reasoning and a value on higher education should be major factors going into the hiring of deans.

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[1] Emily Walkenhorst, “UALR Law School Dean to Exit Post,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 19, 2016.

[2] Eric Owens, “Public Law School Dean Resigns After Offering Counseling to Students Sad About Trump’s Victory,” The Daily Caller, November 23, 2016.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

Decadence at Yale: Justice Thomas

For the first time since 2006, Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court spoke during oral argument on January 14, 2013. Even though a quip made by Justice Scalia prompted the stealth Justice to reply, the content is nonetheless quite revealing concerning Justice Thomas's quite understandable attitude concerning Yale Law School, one of his alma maters.

The case before the court concerned a defendant from Louisiana seeking to have his murder conviction overturned. The case involved the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. Backing Louisiana’s position that the defendant had received an adequate defense, Justice Scalia sought to extol the qualifications of the defendant’s lawyers; the Council of Louisiana had cited Yale Law School as "evidence" of the high competence of at least one of the defendant's lawyers. At that point, several people present in the room heard Justice Thomas remark, “Well, he did not have competent council, then.” Thomas was not entirely joking.

                                                                       Image source: time.com

Trying to account for Thomas's rare breach of his long-kept silence on the bench, the Wall Street Journal points to Yale’s emphasis on affirmative action as having embarrassed Clarence Thomas as a law student benefiting from the program in the 1970s. In his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, Thomas writes  of his fear back then that other students might assume he had been admitted because he is black rather than because of any of his personal accomplishments. “As a symbol of my disillusionment," he wrote in his memoir, "I peeled a 15-cent sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I’d made by going to Yale. . . . I never did change my mind about its value.” Add in the fact that he would store his Yale diploma in his basement instead of displaying it in his chambers, and his castigation of his diploma's value suddenly looks like more than just opposition to affirmative action.

Although not a law student at Yale, I did take and sit in on some law classes on account of the amount of historical political and economic thought in them. Being a Midwesterner, I was not used to the intensity of passive aggression (not to mention raw anger) especially in the law school when it came to enforcing "political correctness." Had Thomas even sneezed any contempt for affirmative action, the "sharks" would have been at him in an instant. I made a comment in a class one time in support of Scalia and Thomas on federalism only to find that a feminist law student had "retaliated" against me by telling an academic administrator that I had tripped her. The administrator, who had a law degree and thus had surely taken evidence, apparently did not need any. As a white male, I must have tripped the black female. Thank God I was not a law student at Yale! Even so, my diploma is in storage.

Source:

Jess Bravin, “Seven-Year Itch: Thomas Breaks Silence,” The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2013.