Professor Tribe vs. Sheriff Clarke: Who’s the more careful scholar?

(5/25, 4:30 p.m. update: Thanks to law professor Glenn Reynolds for promoting this post yesterday with a tweet and, this morning, with a link, bringing thousands of additional readers to this blog just in the last 24 hours. Thanks also for the mention on LewRockwell.com, with this clever summary of the Professor Tribe’s student ghostwriting operation: “It Takes a Tribe.” (end update)

If you pay attention only to liberal-slanted mass media outlets, you’d assume the answer is easy.

Surely Professor Laurence H. Tribe of the prestigious Harvard Law School must be a much more careful scholar than Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, who has recently been branded, in what we view as a political hit job, as a “plagiarist” — not just by CNN (which made the initial charge), but also by the Washington Post, USA Today, NY Daily News, ABC, and Slate, among other mass-media outlets.

But he’s not. Sheriff Clarke, a part-time scholar, is vastly more careful (not to mention honest) than Professor Tribe.

Timeline of scholarly misconduct by Laurence Tribe

(5/24, 2 p.m. update: Thanks to law professor Glenn Reynolds for yet another “Insta-launch,” and particularly for this memorable line: “Who does Clarke think he is, Larry Tribe?” It inspired us to write another post, which will be up soon. (end update)

At the bottom of our post yesterday we linked to posts on two old blogs written by Harvard Law students, summarizing evidence of scholarly misconduct by one of Harvard’s superstar law professors, Laurence H. Tribe (previously praised on this blog, but now added to our enemies list).

To aid our readers in assessing whether we are being fairly critical not just of CNN, but of all mass-media outlets (e.g., WaPo, USA Today, NY Daily News, ABC, Slate), for failing to cover liberal Tribe’s plagiarism/ghostwriting scandals when he was appointed to high office in 2010, while being eager to cover much less serious issues involving the scholarly work of conservative Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., below is a brief chronology of some of the main evidence concerning the allegations against Professor Tribe.

Why didn’t CNN cover plagiarism by Obama’s mentors, Ogletree and Tribe?

(5/23, 10:30 a.m. update) Thanks to Harvard attorney John Hinderaker for his blog post summarizing and commenting on this post: “CNN’s Political Hit Job on Sheriff Clarke.”

[end of update]

Sheriff David A. Clark Jr. enjoys well-deserved national fame for his championing of conservative causes, and particularly for his pushback against liberal “solutions” to the problems of violent crime and urban disfunction that liberals have created through the last half century of misguided social policy.

Indeed, Sheriff Clark has admirers even in at the most far-left institutions — even at Harvard Law School.

Which is why some of the more conservative students at Harvard Law School, including those of us who launched this blog, only one of whom will be graduating soon (more fun next year, tied to the 200th anniversary; stay tuned!), were so pleased to hear last week that Sheriff Clarke will soon be filling an important post in the Department of Homeland Security, in charge of relations with state and local law enforcement.

We were not so pleased to read this hit piece, published by CNN on May 20, attempting to brand Sheriff Clarke as a “plagiarist” because, in writing a master’s thesis which drew on dozens of primary sources, in citing a few of the sources, in various passages of his very lengthy paper, he accurately cited the pages of the sources on which he relied, thus giving full credit to each author, but did not put quotation marks around various passages that Sheriff Clarke had not completely reworded, so that some of the wording was the same.

Laurence Tribe on the Royall Asses’ misguided radicalism

(5/28, 4 p.m. update) At 2:30 p.m., law professor Glenn Reynolds plugged this post on his “Instapundit” blog with a title, as usual, more clever than we are able to come up with: “LARRY TRIBE AND Harvard Law’s Useful Idiots.” We now know what an “Instalaunch” looks like — Glenn’s plug generated 1,500 visits to our blog in just an hour and a half (according to the WordPress stats). Thank you!

If you like this post, please RT this tweet, which uses Glenn’s attention-getting title.

Also, to encourage people to view the short (less than 2 minutes) video of the Royall Asses disrespecting Dean Minow at an event in which she was being honored, please RT this.

(4 p.m. further update): Additional visits to our blog via Glenn’s plug of just two hours ago now exceed 2,000!

(6:30 p.m. further update): A total of 3,289 readers have now visited this blog based on Glenn’s post just four hours ago. If you like the video, please RT this tweet: “Watch what students at Harvard Law School did after Laurence Tribe urged them not to do it.”

(5/29, 4:30 p.m. update) Our 2-minute video of the Royall Asses heckling Dean Minow (excerpted from the 10-minute original they posted on April 17; details here) has now gone viral, thanks largely to last night’s tweet by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers who, ironically, earned her Ph.D (in philosophy) from the institution to which the Asses traveled to heckle Dean Minow, Brandeis University (Minow was there to receive the university’s Gittler Prize).

Sommers certainly wrote an attention-getting tweet: “Chilling tape of fanatical students heckling Harvard Law Dean. Academic Left has created a monster it can’t control.”

So far it has generated 505 retweets (including by heavyhitters such as Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos), 708 “likes,” and many interesting comments — both under Sommers’ tweet and under the YouTube video — addressing the weird, cult-like behavior reflected on the video. A total of 3,292 people have now viewed the video. The best tweets responding to Sommers’ tweet are retweeted on our Twitter account.

Also, Dave Huber of College Fix has done this excellent piece: “Leaked email: Harvard race protesters ignored liberal icon’s advice to tone down rhetoric, tactics.” If you like it, please retweet this.

(5/30, 4:30 p.m. update) The video now has 7,171 views, and many more interesting comments. Thanks to the folks at Maggie’s Farm for their plug this morning. Total views of our blog have zoomed past 90,000, from around 77,000 only a week ago. We have updated our Twitter account by retweeting the best additional tweets, commenting on Sommers’ tweet, made in the past day. Two tweets stand out:

1. By Professor Nicholas A. Christakis, who linked to our video with this note: “Harvard Law students heckling Dean Martha Minnow are engaged more in weak sloganeering than in persuasive arguments.”

2. By Professor Donald Douglas, who tweeted this interesting question asked by Glenn Reynolds in reflecting on the Daily Caller piece on Harvard professor Ken Mack: “How far left do you have to be, to have to lie about how left you are at Harvard Law?” The comments to Glenn’s post contain some interesting suggested answers. E.g.: “Far enough left that the cumulative result will be indistinguishable from a right-wing plot to destroy Harvard Law’s influence — that is, having law professors do to legal education what journalists have been doing to newspapers.” And: “Far enough out in left field, far enough out where the buses do not run, to believe that stuff Sharpton was spouting about pharaonic Egypt being a Black super-civilization?”

(6/1, 6 p.m. update) The video how has 9,172 views, thanks in large part to yesterday’s retweet by @HughHewitt (105K followers) of this @CHSommers (106K followers) tweet, as well as this tweet by David Burge (127K followers). Sommers responded that she had to agree with Burge’s observation.

Meanwhile, law professor Brian Leiter has linked to the video in a short post, and law professor John O. McGinnis has linked to this blog in an essay noting parallels between the current unrest at Harvard Law School and his time at the school as a student during the 1980s. George E. Clark has documented (with a photo) that “Belinda Hall” is history. Finally, in a year-end retrospective on protest activity at the Law School, the Harvard Crimson has, for the first time, finally informed its readers of the existence of this blog (in an article linked here), although it still has not linked to the blog, nor has it addressed any of the facts set forth on the blog — in particular, the overwhelming evidence that the black-tape incident was a hoax; the leaked e-mails regarding the Royall Asses’ efforts to have us investigated by the FBI; and the leaked notes showing that these student protesters radicalized their movement at the behest of ultra-left-wing professors, and in so doing rejected the advice of Laurence Tribe urging them not to take that course.

[end updates]

Was it inevitable that the Royall Asses would fall into the clutches of the left-wing professors with whom they met on December 5 and 14 (see earlier posts here and here), who convinced them to intensify their radical  protest tactics and plunge Harvard Law School into months of bitter acrimony, in an effort to fulfill the professors’ long-held objective to transform our already incredibly liberal school into a far-far-far-left institution?

Were these students fated to serve as useful idiots, so that their movement would end up devolving into little more than a front group for leftist professor-puppeteers such as critical race theorist Kenneth W. Mack, racialist-flame-stoking Stephanie Robinson, and CLS-founder Duncan Kennedy?

With a little adult supervision — with some sound advice by a level-headed, more mainstream liberal, countering the input the student agitators were receiving from the leftist fringe — might have things turned out differently?

More evidence: Royall Asses are puppets of left-wing professors

[IMPORTANT: This is Part 2 of a two-part treatment of the “puppets.” For links to those who’ve commented and expanded on our work, please see updates at top of our prior post. Also, see our subsequent post on Laurence Tribe’s role in this matter.]

Although the Royall Asses’ notes from their Dec. 5 meeting with three left-wing professors appear decisive enough on the point, as we set forth yesterday, we now present further evidence leaked to us by a disenchanted member of the “Royall Must Fall” / “Reclaim HLS” movement.

HLS SJWs: Puppets of left-wing professors?

(5/26, 5 p.m. update) Blake Neff at Daily Caller has published a piece based on this post, making interesting and original contributions to the story (particularly regarding the provenance of the Dec. 5 notes, and regarding Prof. Mack), which we highly recommend: “Leaked Document Shows Harvard Students, Profs Planning to Make School Even More Liberal.”

And don’t miss Part 2 of our analysis of the Royall Asses’ role as “puppets,” published earlier today, here.

Shortly after the Daily Caller piece posted, Dave Huber of @CollegeFix published a piece covering both Part 1 and Part 2 of our analysis, and providing a superb summary not just of our work, but of the Royall Asses’ hijinks during the past several months: “Notes reveal: Harvard Law professors worked closely with campus race protesters.”

(5/27, 10 a.m. update) Harvard attorney John Hinderaker, a staunch supporter of this blog who does not hesitate to call it as he sees it, weighed in last night with an excellent opinion piece, the title of which strikes us as carrying at least a faint whiff of sarcasm: “At Harvard, Leftist Professors Inspire Leftist Students to ‘Rebel.’”

We are particularly grateful for the help that law professor Glenn Reynolds has provided during the last 24 hours in publicizing the evidence we’ve collected of the collaboration between left-wing law students and even more left-wing law professors at Harvard Law School. In addition to various RTs of both our tweets and others’ tweets, last night on his Instapundit blog he linked to the Daily Caller piece, including this biting summary: “AS USUAL, THE SOCIAL-JUSTICE STUDENTS ARE PAWNS OF THE FACULTY.” He also linked to Hinderaker’s piece, aptly summarizing Hinderaker’s take on how the left-wing faculty members view the Royall Asses: “USEFUL IDIOTS.” This morning one of his guest bloggers, Sarah Hoyt, also linked to Hinderaker’s piece.

(5/29, 4:30 p.m. update) Law professor Paul Caron has done this excerpt on the Daily Caller piece : “Report: Harvard Law Prof Hid Far Left Views to  Chair Hiring Committee and “Heavily Influence Hiring Critical Race Theorists.”

[end updates]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Harvard Law School is one of the most left-wing institutions in America. Consider, for example, this week’s controversy over an essay by one of its professors, Mark Tushnet, urging that liberals treat conservative Christians like Nazis. And remember that Democrats receive an astonishing 98 percent of political contributions made by Harvard Law School professors.

But Harvard Law isn’t nearly left-wing enough, according to some members of the faculty who, it turns out, have been working closely at least since early December with the students who comprise the “Royall Must Fall” / “Reclaim HLS” movement — students we’ve dubbed the “Royall Asses,” Social-Justice Warriors whose background information is summarized here.

HLS SJWS always lie?

In our April 22 post outing 45 “Royal Asses” (Harvard Law School Social-Justice Warriors on which background information is summarized here) for their complicity in seeking to have us investigated by the FBI and Harvard merely for making conservatively inclined blog posts, we took care to observe that we do not assume that the Dec. 8 e-mail sent by protest leaders accurately reported what administrators told the leaders at a meeting that morning.

In other words, it’s possible that Harvard administrators never authorized the use of Harvard resources to investigate us, and never told protesters that they had done so. It’s possible, instead, that the two protest leaders who attended the Dec. 8 meeting and prepared the Dec. 8 e-mail simply lied to their fellow protesters in recounting what administrators had said about purportedly having us investigated.

Revealed: 45 Harvard Law students who went along with Gestapo tactics against us

On April 22 we published e-mails — leaked to us by one of the members of the “Royall Must Fall” / “Reclaim HLS” movement — documenting that back in December members of the movement sought to have us investigated by the FBI merely for blogging about the movement, and also were (purportedly) told by HLS administrators that Harvard resources were being used in an effort to discover our identities.

HLS SJWs hypocritically object when conservatives video them

On April 30, Dave Huber of College Fix published this article calling attention to a remarkable video posted by the Social-Justice Warriors at Harvard Law School who, as part of their “Royall Must Fall” / “Reclaim HLS” movement, on February 25 traveled to Brandeis University to disrupt an event honoring our Dean, Martha Minow.

Ari Lieberman: “Harvard Law School: Protecting Anti-Semites, Targeting Conservative Students”

Belated, but heartfelt, thanks to attorney Ari Lieberman for his masterful April 29 essay (which was picked up by Breitbart, and which drew thousands of new readers to our blog) contrasting the hostile treatment at Harvard of us, conservatives students who merely run a humorous blog, with the fawning treatment of a leftist hate-group leader, Royall Ass # 5, Husam El-Quolaq.