Penn$$ vs. NYU($?) For a Not-Super-Liberal Student Forum

[hawnee86]

Wow. I'm an extremely liberal person socially and politically, so I'm sure my personal opinions might contrast in many ways with OPs, but the amount of dickishness in this thread is insane - even for the absurd levels of rudeness and pettiness I usually read in these forums. Seriously, jumping all over someone for their spelling and punctuation in a casual internet forum? Is this your high school's reddit page? Clearly reacting like this is completely pointless, assuming you're trying to "shame" this person or something, and pretty denigrating to yourselves. Perhaps some of you need to learn to allow someone to present something you find slightly objectionable without responding with the trumpets. You're surely going to encounter much worse much more often in your schooling and future careers.

[zombie mcavoy]

Wow. I'm an extremely liberal person socially and politically, so I'm sure my personal opinions might contrast in many ways with OPs, but the amount of dickishness in this thread is insane - even for the absurd levels of rudeness and pettiness I usually read in these forums. Seriously, jumping all over someone for their spelling and punctuation in a casual internet forum? Is this your high school's reddit page? Clearly reacting like this is completely pointless, assuming you're trying to "shame" this person or something, and pretty denigrating to yourselves. Perhaps some of you need to learn to allow someone to present something you find slightly objectionable without responding with the trumpets. You're surely going to encounter much worse much more often in your schooling and future careers.

We *must* hold public intellectuals to a *higher* *standard,* though.

[jbagelboy]

Wow. I'm an extremely liberal person socially and politically, so I'm sure my personal opinions might contrast in many ways with OPs, but the amount of dickishness in this thread is insane - even for the absurd levels of rudeness and pettiness I usually read in these forums. Seriously, jumping all over someone for their spelling and punctuation in a casual internet forum? Is this your high school's reddit page? Clearly reacting like this is completely pointless, assuming you're trying to "shame" this person or something, and pretty denigrating to yourselves. Perhaps some of you need to learn to allow someone to present something you find slightly objectionable without responding with the trumpets. You're surely going to encounter much worse much more often in your schooling and future careers.

no "extremely liberal person [adverbs]" would use the word "denigrating" in this context

^ now that's "jumping all over" someone for basic flaws in syntax and diction. The shit that provoked rebuke here was on another level

[Nathanael]

Still waiting on that un-bigoted critique of feminism

[DELG]

Still waiting on that un-bigoted critique of feminism

yeah having parents with a retirement fund doesn't necessarily mean "loaded" but i am having a hard time how gender equality is problematic for OP

[Nebby]

Still waiting on that un-bigoted critique of feminism

yeah having parents with a retirement fund doesn't necessarily mean "loaded" but i am having a hard time how gender equality is problematic for OP

He's just a nice guy and all these women won't date him. DON'T THEY SEE HOW NICE HE IS???

[Iroh]

Wow. I'm an extremely liberal person socially and politically, so I'm sure my personal opinions might contrast in many ways with OPs, but the amount of dickishness in this thread is insane - even for the absurd levels of rudeness and pettiness I usually read in these forums. Seriously, jumping all over someone for their spelling and punctuation in a casual internet forum? Is this your high school's reddit page? Clearly reacting like this is completely pointless, assuming you're trying to "shame" this person or something, and pretty denigrating to yourselves. Perhaps some of you need to learn to allow someone to present something you find slightly objectionable without responding with the trumpets. You're surely going to encounter much worse much more often in your schooling and future careers.

Eh, if you label yourself an aspiring public intellectual you had better be prepared for all manner of unpleasantness on TLS. If the guy said he was a radical and wondered whether Penn would be too constraining for his social justice aspirations (and that he was specifically concerned about Zionism and capitalism), I think he would have received a similar drubbing.

That said, I think OP does have a point. I attended a very left-wing undergrad (the kind that gets made fun of in the media) and found it very stifling and hostile to other points of view. I'm not religious myself, but (left-leaning) religious students I spoke with were afraid to admit they were religious to their own friends. It was just assumed that if you took religion seriously you were either a secret authoritarian or just plain broken in the head.

My experience at Stanford has been completely different. I think that's partly because people are older and more mature (including myself) and law is an inherently conservative profession, but also because Stanford values intellectual diversity more than my undergrad did.

I can't speak to NYU and Penn specifically, OP, but I'm confident that whichever you choose, you'll find your niche. But for God's sake, don't be a bitter old bastard and go looking for slights from the rest of your classmates.

[JCougar]

Still waiting on that un-bigoted critique of feminism

yeah having parents with a retirement fund doesn't necessarily mean "loaded" but i am having a hard time how gender equality is problematic for OP

But also any parent willing to lend out of their retirement fund is almost certainly only going to do so if it is a smaller fraction of that fund. OP seems to imply his total law school costs will be somewhere around $150-200K on the low end. If your parents can lend you that much money from their fund, they probably have many times more than that. And that would put them in fairly rich territory.

[Nebby]

OP, what is your critique of feminism?

[ballcaps]

OP, what is your critique of feminism?

this!

we're all aching to hear!

[UnicornHunter]

OP, what is your critique of feminism?

And, because I'm curious, environmentalism.

[stoopkid13]

Y'all are a bunch of bullies. This is embarrassing.

[Nekrowizard]

Post removed.

[haplotype]

Jesus, there are a lot of tools on this forum.

OP, I recommend you stop engaging with the baiters, if you haven't already decided to do so. I don't know exactly what your views are, but you give the impression of being the sort of conscientious libertarian who would prefer to believe that most high-IQ, academically successful people are both capable of and interested in rational political discourse. As your undergrad experience probably gave you some idea, that paradigm is wrong. Many are not capable; most are not interested.

Just go wherever you think you'll have a better chance of getting high grades, being happy, and, most importantly, setting yourself up to reach your career goals. Do your work well, don't pay attention to the frothing morons, and find a sane circle of friends/family you can be yourself with.

FWIW, I have a conservative/libertarian friend who's probably going to NYU. I think you guys would get along.

[UnicornHunter]

On a serious note, if the goal is NYC big law just go with whatever school's cheapest. I'm sure NYU has an edge, but not big enough to pay for, especially if you see yourself being happier at NYU. Law students are the same anywhere you go though, so I wouldn't factor in political views at all.

[Mack.Hambleton]

Jesus, there are a lot of tools on this forum.

OP, I recommend you stop engaging with the baiters, if you haven't already decided to do so. I don't know exactly what your views are, but you give the impression of being the sort of conscientious libertarian who would prefer to believe that most high-IQ, academically successful people are both capable of and interested in rational political discourse. As your undergrad experience probably gave you some idea, that paradigm is wrong. Many are not capable; most are not interested.

Just go wherever you think you'll have a better chance of getting high grades, being happy, and, most importantly, setting yourself up to reach your career goals. Do your work well, don't pay attention to the frothing morons, and find a sane circle of friends/family you can be yourself with.

FWIW, I have a conservative/libertarian friend who's probably going to NYU. I think you guys would get along.

OP stop alting

[wojo98]

Charting justice ideology of SCOTUS clerks by school (as loose proxy for school political leaning). Make of that what you will OP.

[float55]

My long-term hope is to focus on defending civil liberties as a practicing attorney, and ideally as a public intellectual as well.

Some people are pretending that this sentence proves I'm some kind of egomaniac who needs to be taken down a peg. Yes, the term "public intellectual" has a pretentious ring to it, but I tried to mitigate that by saying I "hope" to "ideally" become a public intellectual, thus acknowledging that it's a difficult status to achieve, and that it might not be in the cards for me. I could have said "I'd love to someday advocate for civil liberties in the public media, maybe even write a book or make a documentary, speak at political events, and stuff like that," but I'm not sure that that would have sounded much less pretentious, and, again, brevity.

In any case, there's nothing unusual about my ambitions. Lots of people aspire to have their ideas heard by a wide audience. That's why so many people start intellectual blogs and YouTube channels. It's pretty cynical to dismiss all of those people as egomaniacs who just feel entitled to attention.

[zombie mcavoy]

ah well you have a captive audience here

tell us your ideas about "environmentalism" and "feminism"

[middlebear]

My long-term hope is to focus on defending civil liberties as a practicing attorney, and ideally as a public intellectual as well.

Some people are pretending that this sentence proves I'm some kind of egomaniac who needs to be taken down a peg. Yes, the term "public intellectual" has a pretentious ring to it, but I tried to mitigate that by saying I "hope" to "ideally" become a public intellectual, thus acknowledging that it's a difficult status to achieve, and that it might not be in the cards for me. I could have said "I'd love to someday advocate for civil liberties in the public media."

OK, so this is coming from a "trying to help you so you know what you sound like" place, honestly not trying to be mean: in my honest opinion, that is the sort of thing you don't cop to, almost (though not as bad) like going into LS saying you want to be a SCOTUS clerk. Or, at the very least, using that phrase makes it sound that way, particularly when the first association most people are going to have is the worst possible image of a talking head on TV--which, bro, is a bad thing. And using words like "hope" and "ideally" does nothing to mitigate that, though props for preparing to lawyer your sentences.

I think if you just say, "I'd love to someday advocate for civil liberties in public media," that actually does sound a lot less... potentially pretentious. Full stop, don't add anything else. "I'd love to someday advocate for civil liberties."

Hopefully this doesn't sound condescending, but I just don't think you're quite aware of how you sound, and it's that which has provoked a lot of the backlash here, and probably will continue to do so.

[DELG]

honestly i am having a hard time any top law school, stuffed full of future defense attorneys, won't have a few fedsoc types wandering around, but probably no climate change deniers or open MRA types

[timbs4339]

My long-term hope is to focus on defending civil liberties as a practicing attorney, and ideally as a public intellectual as well.

Some people are pretending that this sentence proves I'm some kind of egomaniac who needs to be taken down a peg. Yes, the term "public intellectual" has a pretentious ring to it, but I tried to mitigate that by saying I "hope" to "ideally" become a public intellectual, thus acknowledging that it's a difficult status to achieve, and that it might not be in the cards for me. I could have said "I'd love to someday advocate for civil liberties in the public media, maybe even write a book or make a documentary, speak at political events, and stuff like that," but I'm not sure that that would have sounded much less pretentious, and, again, brevity.

In any case, there's nothing unusual about my ambitions. Lots of people aspire to have their ideas heard by a wide audience. That's why so many people start intellectual blogs and YouTube channels. It's pretty cynical to dismiss all of those people as egomaniacs who just feel entitled to attention.

The more neutral, brief descriptor you are looking for is along the lines of "I'd like to do policy work in the civil liberties area."

[Ohiobumpkin]

So long as you aren't too quarrelsome, you'll be fine.

I appreciate what you're saying, but I think this thread is proof that being respectful won't ensure that I'll be fine at all. Unless saying that you're "very critical" of certain ideologies is inherently nasty (which it isn't), I don't think the barrage of shockingly obnoxious barbs that I've received can be attributed to any lack of civility on my part.

This is what I'm worried about. There are people who have been so sheltered from any kind of criticism, of, say, feminism and environmentalism, that they can only react to it by classifying it as the same kind of ignorant, bigoted drivel that they watch John Stewart, Bill Maher, and John Oliver mock almost every night of the week. It's incredibly frustrating and alienating, and it could have real consequences for my success, in every sense, in law school.

It's not about trying to avoid liberal ideas. It's about seeking out a mature, intellectually curious community that I can actually participate in.

And people like Rush Limbaugh and the late Breitbart were so polite to liberals. . .

Seriously, from one conservative to another (although, I kind of like feminism and environmentalism), you need to stop being so damn sensitive. You are choosing a profession famous for confrontation and A-type personalities. If you don't like confrontation and having your ideas challenged, don't go to law school.

I'm not sure what specific ideological positions you espoused while in undergrad, or how you discussed them, but you need to be adult about this decision of which school to attend. How you were treated by people on the political left in undergrad is literally the last thing you should consider in making this decision. How much scholarship you get, where you want to live/work in the immediate future are more important.

As to where you want to work, such as a conservative/libertarian civil liberties organization, this is where you want to consider what your beliefs are, and how they mesh with your organization's.

[float55]

My long-term hope is to focus on defending civil liberties as a practicing attorney, and ideally as a public intellectual as well.

Some people are pretending that this sentence proves I'm some kind of egomaniac who needs to be taken down a peg. Yes, the term "public intellectual" has a pretentious ring to it, but I tried to mitigate that by saying I "hope" to "ideally" become a public intellectual, thus acknowledging that it's a difficult status to achieve, and that it might not be in the cards for me. I could have said "I'd love to someday advocate for civil liberties in the public media."

OK, so this is coming from a "trying to help you so you know what you sound like" place, honestly not trying to be mean: in my honest opinion, that is the sort of thing you don't cop to.

Thank you -- I absolutely see your point, and I wouldn't say what I said about the whole public intellectual thing to my peers upon meeting them, since, yeah, it could sound obnoxious. But I hope that you'd agree that people on this thread are getting on my case about it mainly because they passed judgment on me over political stuff, and now they're looking for ways to attack me. And, so, this is what I'm worried about in law school: being maliciously scrutinized by self-righteous zealots who just can't wait for an excuse to attack my character. I'm hoping to find a mature, respectful community that gives people the benefit of the doubt when they say something iffy. But I guess that's even more naïve than trying to be the next Chomsky!

[run26.2]

This has probably been said somewhere in the thread, but I didn't read it all. At most law schools without a religious affiliation, the number of students who identify more strongly with liberalism will exceed those who do not.

At either of these law schools, as at most law schools, you will still be able to find groups whose ideologies more closely align to yours. It is not homogeneous, even if your UG was. If you express your views in class or in other public fora, be prepared to deal with the fact that you may develop a reputation. This will be the case wherever you go to school.