Lily Malcolm asks why ambitious go-getter John Kerry ended up going to law school at decidedly middle-of-the-road Boston College rather than a more prestigious institution. Lily has some theories:

Maybe he was sick of the Ivy League. Or he decided BC would be better for his political career. Or he had terrible grades (how bad would they have to be to outweigh a Silver Star?). Were there financial complications? Geographical constraints?

Obviously I can’t read Kerry’s mind. My gut level feeling is that geography, alone, wouldn’t explain it—assuming his resume was as impressive as Lily indicates it should have been, Kerry could have gone to Harvard—historical Yale–Harvard grudges notwithstanding. And, generally, the “political career” explanation only works when you’re talking about leaving the state or region for law school; no rationally ambitious Mississippian would dare try to come back home and run for office after going to Princeton or Yale, what with the perfectly good (at least for such political purposes or for in-state practice, if not for one’s future reputation on the national scene) law school sitting right here in Oxford.

Indeed, it’s possible that Kerry’s high-profile antics after returning from Vietnam had a negative impact on his stature; law school admissions committees in the early 1970s, I suspect, were rather conservative bodies filled with men who served in World War II or Korea before their academic careers. Hanging out with the Hanoi Jane crowd and publicly accusing your comrades-in-arms of being war criminals don’t seem like the sorts of activities that would have endeared Kerry to an Ivy League admissions committee circa 1971.

That being said, people end up at particular schools for the most idiosyncratic reasons. Someone familiar with my academic record and standardized test scores probably wouldn’t guess I’d have degrees from the University of Memphis and Ole Miss. The place where one got a particular degree is only a very rough indicator of one’s talents—something I’m hoping (though skeptical) that hiring committees bear in mind.

Update: Lily has an update with a number of different perspectives.

Jane Galt, freshly rested (but not tanned), has a post of Den Bestean proportions on academe’s political diversity problem. Jane ponders these questions, in turn:

1. Are conservatives underrepresented in academia?
2. If they are, is this underrepresentation due to action on the part of the faculty, or is there some other reason that we can’t (or shouldn’t) correct?
3. If conservatives are underrepresented, and the cause of this underrepresentation is due, in whole or in part, to the actions of the faculty or administration, should we try to do anything about this?

You should definitely RTWT™.

Update: Both Jane and James Joyner don’t think the remedy is to be found in the political process; James writes:

I also share her libertarian instincts on the matter; there’s not much to be done about this phenomenon that wouldn’t be worse than the problem.

Like Chris, I can’t resist those silly internet quizzes, so I also took that Libertarian Purity Test that’s all the rage today.

The first time I took it, I answered all the questions yes or no, since there was no “undecided” option. I was able to answer a solid “no” to all the five point questions, a pretty solid “yes” to most of the one-pointers, and felt like I needed an essay-style format to answer the three-pointers, but I gave gut-level answers to all of them. I scored a 34, “your libertarian credentials are obvious.”

That’s hardly the stratospheric heights occupied by Will Baude, but that didn’t seem quite right. Apart from my support for drug legalization, I don’t think my libertarian credentials are at all obvious.

So I took the test again, refraining from answering most of the questions that I felt unsure about. I scored a 23, “soft-core libertarian,” putting me in the neighborhood of Amanda Butler, Josh Chafetz, and Matthew Yglesias, which seems about right.

Somehow, I think “Annoy France—Vote Bush” would be a very effective campaign slogan. That said, the “Priceless” approach seems effective too.

As for me, I did my civic duty today and cast my ballot in the only primary offered (the Democratic one). Unlike usual, the real vote-counting equipment wasn’t in use—instead, we got a sheet of paper obviously run off on a laser printer with various “fill in the circle” options, including “uncommitted.” Since I think the Democrats ought to be committed, that option was right off the table; instead, as a sensible, strategically-minded voter, I decided to throw my support to the candidate not named Kerry who was most likely to be close to the 15% threshold needed to get delegates.

Eugene Volokh notes yet another blackface incident at a college fraternity. This time it’s Pi Kappa Alpha at Georgia State University. Prof. Volokh notes that the university is considering punishing the students involved, and that the wearing of blackface is protected under the first amendment. He then asks:

Do the university officials not know the law? Or do they just not care?

Good question. But here’s the question I really want answered:

When are these idiots going to figure out that blackface costumes are deeply offensive?

It was only a matter of time until Juan Non-Volokh posted Rush lyrics in his “Sunday Song Lyric” series, and of course it was Rush’s Nietzschean anthem, “The Trees.”

Reading the lyrics, I’m remided of an old joke, which I’ve given an arboreal twist to fit the theme of the song.

Q: What’s the difference between a Southern Oak and a Northern Oak?

A: A Southern Oak doesn’t mind growing near Maples, as long they don’t get uppity. A Northern Oak doesn’t mind uppity Maples, as long as they don’t grow nearby.

Going off on a bit of a tangent, I’ve always thought that the Coolest Band Name Ever belonged to a band in my former home of Rochester, NY: the Pietzsche Nietzsches, pronounced “Peachy Neechies.”

USM president Shelby Thames is now blaming the whole mess on the American Association of University Professors, a group whose combined national membership isn’t that much bigger than his campus’ student enrollment.

Ah, well, it could have been worse; he could have blamed outside agitators and sicced the Sovereignty Commission on them.

Congratulations to Kelley on her first blogiversary! And also congrats to Kevin Drum on the occasion of his moving on up in the world.

Forgive me for saying it, but the latest news from Hattiesburg seems just a wee bit odd:

University of Southern Mississippi President Shelby Thames said Tuesday he is considering whether or not to allow two dismissed professors back into the classroom to serve out the semester.

If he makes the decision, the reprieve would only be temporary. Thames said he would initiate termination proceedings at the end of the semester against Gary Stringer and Frank Glamser, two outspoken critics of his administration and leadership.

Thames, mind you, is the same guy who on Friday considered Stringer and Glamser such a threat to the university that he had the university’s custodial staff cart off stuff from their offices and change the locks while he was meeting with them. My bogosity meter is rapidly approaching 11 here, folks.

Thames’ meeting with USM students today didn’t exactly go well, either, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

More on this topic here; this is my entry in today’s OTB Traffic Jam.

Stephen Karlson and Eugene Volokh have followups on their posts from yesterday on the ongoing kerfuffle at Southern Miss. Quoth Volokh on the importance of the case:

[T]he faculty—as joint governors of the school—must have the right to criticize the administration, which must of course include the right to investigate alleged resume fraud by the University’s vice president of research. If the University is right that the faculty members whom it’s trying to fire engaged in defamation (i.e., were themselves lying) or real misuse of university facilities, then its actions might well be proper. But if the University is just trying to silence faculty members whose criticisms it sees as disruptive, that’s very dangerous indeed. Shared governance, whether in Washington, D.C. or in a university, necessarily involves some disruption and tension. Trying to eliminate that disruption and tension is impossible unless one abandons the shared governance project.

Meanwhile, I Know What I Know is still on the case; as Scott notes, The Student Printz is all over this, and it isn’t looking pretty for USM president Shelby F. Thames.

Via both Stephen Bainbridge and Will Baude, I took the latest “flavor of the month” quiz: the Libertarian Purity Test. I got a 50 out of a maximum 160, mainly because my hard-core minarchist libertarian views have subsided over time in favor of more practical politics.

IMHO, the quiz was actually pretty poorly engineered; the “libertarian” answer was always the “yes” answer. This sort of thing generally leads to response bias. But, the questions seemed to tap libertarian attitudes better than the infamous Political Compass does.