1. Yes, at least on students the law school. Those students tend to have a outsized effect on the legal community. So if you are a harvard law student with conservative leanings and you are looking for mentorship where there are few options you are going to more likely end up studying under someone like Vermeule who is much more extreme …
1. Yes, at least on students the law school. Those students tend to have a outsized effect on the legal community. So if you are a harvard law student with conservative leanings and you are looking for mentorship where there are few options you are going to more likely end up studying under someone like Vermeule who is much more extreme than the average conservative. Hence the outsized effect.
2. That question misunderstands the entire point. Do you think there are no conservative students going to those schools. Who are the professors who share their persuasion and are thus more likely to mentor them? Are they more radical or mainstream? You don’t need to be the majority to have a giant ideological effect, even if that effect might only be on a subset of students.
I'm sure Prof. Vermeule has considerable influence on conservative-leaning students, but whether it's fair to say that he has outsized influence on Harvard Law School, let alone Harvard University, is another matter. I have no inside perspective on what goes on at Harvard or any similar institution, but it's a matter of conventional wisdom that the general tenor of opinion among university faculty and administrators -- at least among those who're outspoken re controversial political and social issues and particularly in elite universities -- is well left of center, and no information that has come to my attention leads me to doubt it.
1. Yes, at least on students the law school. Those students tend to have a outsized effect on the legal community. So if you are a harvard law student with conservative leanings and you are looking for mentorship where there are few options you are going to more likely end up studying under someone like Vermeule who is much more extreme than the average conservative. Hence the outsized effect.
2. That question misunderstands the entire point. Do you think there are no conservative students going to those schools. Who are the professors who share their persuasion and are thus more likely to mentor them? Are they more radical or mainstream? You don’t need to be the majority to have a giant ideological effect, even if that effect might only be on a subset of students.
I'm sure Prof. Vermeule has considerable influence on conservative-leaning students, but whether it's fair to say that he has outsized influence on Harvard Law School, let alone Harvard University, is another matter. I have no inside perspective on what goes on at Harvard or any similar institution, but it's a matter of conventional wisdom that the general tenor of opinion among university faculty and administrators -- at least among those who're outspoken re controversial political and social issues and particularly in elite universities -- is well left of center, and no information that has come to my attention leads me to doubt it.