Wow. Guess I touched a nerve there! ;)
Um... Because I was in a hurry and it took about 5 seconds to find the wiki page. Did you find information on the HLR page that disagreed with what I quoted from the Wiki? No? Then who cares?
The relevant point is that only 14 out of 41-43 students are selected on the basis of their grades (actually, half grades and half writing). Another 20 are selected purely on the basis of their writing. And then another 7-9 are chosen arbitrarily, with an admitted requirement to fulfill affirmative action goals. In other words, if out of the initial 34 who got in on merit, there are not enough black faces, they'll make up the difference by selecting some more black folks to fill in the review.
I'm not saying that Obama was selected for that reason. I *am* saying that without knowing for sure that he wasn't, it's equally incorrect to assume that his skin played no part in his selection. Given that 41-43 students out of a total body of 560 are chosen to join the HLR (roughly 7.5%), it's a good bet that any black student attending Harvard Law who wants to join the HLR can (what percentage of that body is black do you think or was when Obama was there?).
Tell you what. You want to debunk this idea? Find Obama's class and show me how many black students applied for the Review the same year he did. If it's more than 4 or 5 I'd be shocked. Then find out how many out those black students who applied didn't get in...
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Reading your pedantic babble make me wonder why I waste my time replying. Obviously, you have had a great deal of experience challenging other law students for a spot on the law review, which is student run if you didn't know.
Lol. It's a writing competition. You do understand that the Review is essentially a glorified newsletter, right? I could list off the number of writing, speech, and debate competitions I've qualified for (and many I've won). I've literally got a box *full* of medals and awards from various academic related competitions from High School and College. It's pretty meaningless stuff really.
The fact that it's student run doesn't really strengthen your argument btw...
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And obviously those at HLS knew Obama was going to be president 20 years ago, so no one had a chance to challenge him nor did the want to do so.
No. They knew that he was black. And in a uppity east coast university desperately trying to fill quotas of black people to show that they aren't really racist, that means the faculty and students will fall over themselves to put a black guy front and center if they can. I'm sure Obama was above average in terms of his intellect and academic qualifications and that more than qualified him for HLR.
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Coupled with that, the fact that he was black means in your mind that he could have been a drooling sped and still would have been crowned king of the school. Your vain attempts to diminish the man are pretty pathetic.
No. I'm sure that out of the black students at the school who were interested in and applied for the HLR, he was the top one. But it's a lot easier to be the top of a very small group though, isn't it?
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The fact is most law schools are highly competitive. From grades to internships/externships to spots on the various law journals, law schools aren't in the business of casually giving away anything.
And yet, they have affirmative action "goals", which by definition means that if you are a person of color you don't actually have to compete with the rest of the student body. You're only competing with applicants of the same racial background as yourself.
And in case you're wondering, this is *exactly* why many of us strongly oppose affirmative action programs. Not because we don't want black and latinos to have the same opportunities as whites, but precisely because it makes it impossible to know for sure how accomplished that minority student really was. Had there been no affirmative action programs at Harvard, we could all safely assume that Obama really was top notch out of the entire highly competitive student body. But the very existence of affirmative action means that we can't do that and may judge him (perhaps even unfairly) on that basis.
Perhaps you could join me now in decrying the practice of affirmative action? Wouldn't that be a step in the right direction?
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And HLS is the best of the best. You have to be pretty brilliant to succeed there. Everyone there wants to be on the Law Review.
No. Actually it isn't. It's got a name people recognize and so they think it's a great school. Because of that the rich folks fight tooth and nail to get their students into the school, thinking (just as you do) that the name means that it's the best. They donate money to get their kids in, which actually waters down the quality of the students.
If you actually want to practice law instead of simply rub elbows with the children of the wealthy and powerful, you're better off getting a law degree from your local state university in most cases than going to Harvard. It is, however, exactly the kind of school you go to if you want to pursue the political side of law though...
As to the Annenberg Challenge? Um... The Challenge fund was founded by a Republican, but each individual "challenge" does things their own way. Let's not play that silly game.
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"The whole idea of it being radical when it was this tie of blue-chip, white-collar, CEOs and civic leaders is just ridiculous," said the foundation's former development director, Marianne Philbin.
Lots of CEOs and civic leaders endorse and support pretty far left liberal ideologies. This plays on a fallacy that all wealthy people are conservative. It's actually arguably the other way around.
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The foundation gave money to groups of public schools – usually three to 10 – who partnered with some sort of outside organization to improve their students' achievement.
Yup. Which is strange. They didn't give money to schools or even school organizations in most cases. They primarily funded political organizations (not surprisingly very liberal ones), with the idea that if they achieved political change then they could push though education reform. It was an incredibly loose interpretation of what the Annenberg Challenge was supposed to be about.
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The programs the foundation funded were designed to allow individuals from the "external partners" – whether the musicians in the symphony or the business leaders in the commercial club – to help improve student achievement. They were along the lines of mentoring by artists, literacy instruction, professional development for teachers and administrators, and training for parents in everything from computer skills to helping their children with homework to advocating for their children at school.
That sounds wonderful. But ask yourself "how?" they did that?
Read that section very very carefully. They didn't partner with the schools, or with the students. They partnered with teachers and administrators, and trained parents (in many cases, this was more of a community program that had not as much to do with education as teaching the parents what sorts of political ideologies would best help their students, which politicians to vote for who were "best for the schools", etc).
Those who have read through the documents from the Challenge have raised some serious concerns about how the money was spent. This was not your normal vanilla education program as you might think.
Oh. And while one Annenberg Challenge is not directly related to another (as I pointed out earlier), it is interesting to note that factcheck.org (which many of you seem to rely on) is itself funded by an Annenberg Challenge (Philly IIRC). Kinda funny how the world turns round, huh?
