[Alumni-chat] Antioch law school and thoughts on Al Guskin

[Sistersara at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/14/2008 12:44:26 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
Matthew.Levitt at park.edu writes:

There  were several other issues that I recall being discussed at the 
time  regarding the closure of the law school.  •    At that time (I  have 
no idea if there is now), there was no other law school in Washington  
D.C.  Part of the effort to save the law school was based on the  desire 
to have a law school within the D.C. city  limits.


DC is loaded with Law Schools.  Georgetown (Jesuit) has one, plus post  JD 
programs in International Law connected with their School of Foreign Service,  
Catholic University has two -- one for American Law, and another for Canon Law, 
 George Washington has a huge law school -- dates way back, J. Edgar Hoover  
attended GW as a part time and sometimes night school student before World War 
 One. After Hoover became "The Director" he arranged for GW to teach Law  
School courses at night in the FBI section of the Department of Justice, so that  
agents who were not lawyers could become JD's.   I am not sure of  American 
University -- I know lawyers who attended AU, but I am not sure if it  was for 
Law School.  Howard University has a Law School -- founded in the  immediate 
post World War One period.  Distinguished alumni would include  Thurgood 
Marshall, who as a student of Charles Hamilton Houston formulated the  Legal 
Strategy for overturning Plessy v Fergeson.  Harrison Wofford who was  Kennedy's 
Special Assistant for Civil Rights rejected Yale, and opted for Howard  as his Law 
School -- knowing that he wanted to practice Civil Rights Law, and  the best 
training for that was with Houston.  Even Trinity College, a  Catholic Women's 
College run by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur long had a  program they 
ran jointly with Catholic University, producing women lawyers from  a population 
of Catholic Women's School grads, long before it became  fashionable.  What 
DC did not have till the late 60's or early 70's was a  Public University 
parallel to Ohio State or U of Michigan.  As I understand  it, what was Antioch Law 
School was acquired by the new DC University, which  probably means it gets 
some public funding through Congress.  And these  days there are also huge 
state supported Public law schools at U of Maryland and  at George Mason in N. 
Virginia.  In otherwords, the area is pretty flush  with Law Schools.  
 
Yes, I can well imagine that the Law School students would have had very  
negative feelings about anyone from YSO after the decision had been taken to  
close down operations -- about like the response of a few that I know to another  
decision made in June 2007.  And in other ways the situation was similar --  
the school did not have its own governing board, and the AU Trustees were very 
 distant.  There had been a churning of leadership, Dixon to Birnbaum to  
Guskin, with a few acting Presidents inbetween.  Any new institution like  that 
needs hands-on management in its early years.  Again -- perhaps we can  absorb 
something from that experience too.  



**************The year's hottest artists on the red carpet at the Grammy 
Awards. Go to AOL Music.      
(http://music.aol.com/grammys?NCID=aolcmp00300000002565)