My "lived experience" at Georgetown gave me a unique perspective on the higher-ed crisis.
Thanks to Eugene for inviting me to participate in the Volokh Conspiracy's venerable tradition of the author's weeklong guest-blog. I'm particularly excited for the opportunity not only to preview my new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites, but to dispel some Ilya Confusion. Then again, it may also make Ilya Confusion harder to discern, because the most common way I recognize interlocutors who are thinking of "the other Ilya" (Somin) is when they reference my blogging on this site. Well, now we're both VC bloggers.
In any event, my new book Lawless uses my "lived experience"—what one friend called "the Troubles"—as a jumping-off point for diving into the illiberal takeover of law schools and the legal profession. It discusses failures in (1) bureaucracy, (2) ideology, and (3) leadership, and (4) proposes reforms. My remaining posts will cover each of those numbered items.
VC readers no doubt know my story. When I accepted Randy Barnett's offer to become executive director of Georgetown's Center for the Constitution, I thought it would be a chance to have a different kind of impact on public affairs. After nearly 15 years at the Cato Institute, having become a vice president and published a critically acclaimed book on the Supreme Court, I was looking for a new challenge. Well, that's what I got, but not quite how I'd imagined it.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Reason
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Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. This piece is adapted from Ilya's new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites, available on January 14.
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