When Law Schools Snub the Rankings

To the Editor:

Re “In Growing Movement, More Top Law Schools Will Boycott Rankings” (news article, Nov. 19):

​As a law professor for more than 25 years, I applaud the recent boycott of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. The rankings serve only the periodical itself and deans adept at prioritizing favored metrics, especially test scores.

More insidiously, the rankings harm students. In addition to motivating deans to award scholarships to students with the highest test scores instead of students with true financial need, and discouraging public interest work, at best the rankings provide students a one-dimensional picture.

Law school is a significant investment. Especially below the Top 10, a student choosing among law schools should consider many factors, including the cultural nuances of the institution, which only old-fashioned due diligence can unearth. It breaks my heart when students, lured by rankings, later discover they could have chosen a better fit.

I hope the remaining Top 10 deans quickly follow suit and embolden the top 25 law schools to call out the U.S. News rankings as the sham they truly are.

Susan Pace Hamill
Tuscaloosa, Ala.
The writer is a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law.

To the Editor:

“In Growing Movement, More Top Law Schools Will Boycott Rankings” describes the scramble to enter the vaunted “T14” — the top 14 law schools as ranked by U.S. News.

“At No. 15,” the article declares, “U.C.L.A. is tantalizingly close to the T14.” The difference between ranking 14th and 15th is presented as clear-cut and consequential, illustrating the absurdity of reducing the many facets of legal education to a single number.

The article cites a study that found graduates from the T14 to have higher salaries and more “prestigious careers” — on average. Yes, the law schools in the T14 are excellent, but there is no magic to the number 14, and the U.S. News algorithm includes as much “noise” as “signal.”

Moreover, the remaining 185 law schools reflect a wide range of approaches and cannot be lumped together. As the dean of an outstanding law school with strong placement in the kind of prestigious jobs the article refers to, I know that many schools provide superb student outcomes, a fact erased by the cited study and obscured by U.S. News’s opaque numbers.

Prospective students miss out when they substitute reliance on U.S. News rankings for their own research into which law schools are a good fit for them, given their academic records, interests, career goals and financial situations.

Matthew Diller
New York
The writer is dean of Fordham Law School.

Libraries Changed Our Lives. Let’s Support Them.

To the Editor:

Re “Thankful for Libraries,” by Charles M. Blow (column, Nov. 26):

Thanks to Mr. Blow for his column about the importance of libraries in his life. His experience touched me personally.

I grew up in a home lacking books. The public library was an oasis for me. Little did I know that when I later attended college and supported myself partly by working in a public library system that I would become a librarian.

The recent attacks on public and school libraries are so misguided. Libraries have always done their very best to serve their communities by representing many points of view. They deserve our support.

Sam Simon
Nyack, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Like many people, I have had a lifelong love affair with libraries — from the time my dad took me to our local library to get my first library card when I was 6.

The librarian at my elementary school was Mrs. Moreland, mother of my good friend Stevie. She introduced me to wonderful books as a third grader that led to my becoming a reader for life.

As a somewhat nerdy high school student, I would head after school to our local library, part of the Houston Public Library system, spending half my time on the children’s side of the library and the other half on the adult side. My parents never tried to restrict what I could read. When I came to New York, one of the first things I did was to get my library card.

Libraries and the devoted librarians who work in them have been my friends for these many years. It pains me to read about the harassment that many librarians have had to endure at the encouragement from certain politicians.

Reading is empowering. No wonder that those who want to tell the rest of us what to do fear libraries and books.

Jacqueline Lowry
New York
The writer is a retired teacher of reading, math and science in an elementary-school gifted and talented program.

The Black-Jewish Relationship

To the Editor:

Re “Blacks and Jews, Again,” by Michael Eric Dyson (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 27):

Professor Dyson’s illuminating and refreshingly honest essay about the historically fraught, ambivalent relationship between African American and Jewish communities is a gift for both of them. If they are to transcend this relationship and unequivocally condemn antisemitism or racism when it arises in their respective communities, they need to learn each other’s histories.

Both groups are survivors of institutionalized terror and traumatic violence of historic proportions, perpetrated by bigots. Thus, both groups know prejudicial hatred when they see it, and both know how dangerous it is.

As Mr. Dyson implies, knowing each other’s histories will allow African Americans and Jews to identify with each other, to understand, for example, how the suffering of the Jewish people “inspired the sorrow songs” of African Americans (e.g., “Go Down, Moses”) more than a century ago.

African Americans and Jews should also remember who benefits from promulgating antisemitic or racist tropes. It must be incredibly gratifying for white supremacist organizations when African Americans and Jews channel the same antisemitism and racism, respectively, as those who would banish them from the country. ​

Paul Siegel
New York​​​
The writer is a professor of psychology at Purchase College and Westchester Community College, SUNY.

Christine McVie’s Magic

To the Editor:

Re “Christine McVie, Wellspring of Soulful Hits for Fleetwood Mac, Dies at 79” (obituary, Dec. 1):

I mourned the death of Christine McVie this week. What a loss. As I listened at bedtime to Fleetwood Mac’s hits, I reflected on the sadness that arose.

When we mourn our fallen generational culture icons, especially musicians (because music and memory are entwined), we are mourning the loss of our youth, with its exuberance, dreams and open promises for the future. We are mourning ourselves.

Steve Gellman
Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.

Election Liars, Not Deniers

To the Editor:

I do wish the media would stop calling certain politicians election deniers.

None of them are likely to really believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

They are not deniers; they are election liars. Cold, cynical, opportunistic, sociopathic liars.

They lie solely to gather their base’s votes, and the heck with democracy.

Charlie Phillips
Portland, Ore.