The Yin Blog

You decide, sloppy lawyering, or sloppy journalism?

According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, my former employer is being sued for discrimination (again).  Last time, it was a claim of viewpoint discrimination; this time, it's age discrimination:

Dobkin, a veteran attorney, claims he was denied a position on the school's faculty because of his age. 

"I just think that it is pretty obvious to me and my lawyers that persons over the age of 40 are not considered for entry-level positions. That is widely known in academic circles. Not only do we see this as illegal, but it is a disservice to students who are being taught by professors, with some exceptions, that have never practiced law in the fields they are teaching," Dobkin said in a telephone interview with the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

The article goes on to note that, according to the lawsuit, "the College of Law has not hired a faculty member older than 40 in the past 10 years."

This is either an example of sloppy lawyering, or sloppy journalism. Thomas Gallanis was hired last year, and his CV shows that he earned his BA in 1987, which would generally mean that he was around 42-43 years old when he was hired. Of course, Gallanis was a lateral hire, not entry level, so the claim would appear to be true if it refers only to entry level hires -- in which case, it's sloppy journalism, since this is something that could have been checked pretty easily on the website.

UPDATE: Brian Leiter comments here, suggesting that Dobkin can't win the lawsuit because there are too many non-age related reasons that could exist, and concludes: "One he assumes he must know this--or have been so advised by his attorney--and so is pursuing the matter to draw attention to the more general issue about possible age discrimination in academic hiring."

But it could be simpler, too, no?  Survive or avoid a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, get into discovery, and then seek a settlement either before a summery judgment motion, or after surviving one.

On the road from Iowa to Oregon, part 1

At 5:15 am on July 10, the morning that our movers were arriving to load up our stuff for our move from Iowa to Oregon, I finally gave up on packing and woke up my wife, who'd gone to bed at 3 am, so that I could get a couple of hours of sleep.  I don't know about others, but the observation in our moving guide that people underestimate how much time packing takes . . . it was certainly true for us.

Fortunately, the movers came prepared with enough bodies to help with not just loading but also last-minute packing, and that evening, my wife and two boys and I hit the road in our minivan.  Stop no. 1 was West Des Moines, past the boys' bedtime, but not unreasonably so.

On day 2, we drove from West Des Moines to Kearney, Nebraska, coincidentally staying at the same hotel that my wife and I had stayed at seven years ago when we moved to Iowa from California(!).  Along the way, to entertain my older son, we played the game of spotting different state license plates, racking up a total of 22 of them.

On day 3, we made it to Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Some highlights of the day included a stop at a Burger King for lunch, where there was an enormous gathering of motorcycle riders.  (I'll post a picture when we get settled in.)  They were the Patriot Guard, there to mourn Sgt. Duffy, a local young man who had been killed in Iraq recently.  We also stopped at Cabela's, which is like REI for hunters.  Like the Second Amendment?  You'd like this store.  We spotted another 11 new state license plates, including Alaska.  (No Hawaii yet.)

And on day 4, we arrived in Rock Springs, Wyoming.  Wyoming is a pretty state, but man is it sparsely populated.  Once we left Laramie, it was just barren. . . .  I mean, it makes Iowa along the 80 look overdeveloped!  And that's where I am right now.

7 years of separation(s)

I was just thinking today about how 7 years seems to be a defining period for me going back a ways now.  I finished college in 1988 without much of an idea of what I wanted to do for a career.  7 years later, I finished law school in 1995 with a very clear idea (become a law professor).  7 years after that, I started teaching law here at the University of Iowa in 2002.  And 7 years have passed since then, and now I'm about to move on to teaching law at Lewis & Clark Law School in Oregon.  Pretty coincidental . . . .

My unknown Good Samaritan!

You have to love Iowa City!

Today, I was biking home from the law school (for the first time), and somehow, unknown to me, my bike bag fell off my rack.  When I got home, I got off my bike and turned to get the bag, only to see it wasn't there!  There was nothing critical inside, although there was a check I needed to mail to a contractor, and some HR paperwork.  But the bag itself was $40.

So I backtracked all the way back to where I last knew I had it, but . . . nothing.

I called the bank to stop payment on the check, and then we went out for dinner.  When we got back, my bike bag was resting on our front step.  Whoever picked it up saw the return address on the unmailed envelope and dropped it off for me.  How awesome is that?!?

From Iowa to Oregon . . . not so economically happy?

According to this economic happiness survey, I'm going to be moving from the #2 state (Iowa) to the #50 state (Oregon).  Hmm . . . .

Why is it snowing?!?

Come on, it's almost April!  Why is it snowing right now?!?

Baseball and university salaries

My good friend Nick Johnson has an interesting post in which he uses the Tampa Bay Rays as an example of how "you get what you pay for" isn't true in baseball.  He then uses that example to spring forward to university administrator salaries:

It's a story worth remembering next time we buy the "you get what you pay for" line when hiring university administrators (we've recently picked up another one in the $500,000-$1,000,000 range (salary, plus benefits, expenses, deferred compensation, etc.).

It's not clear to me if Nick is saying that the Rays refute the notion that you must have a large payroll if you want to make it to the World Series, which would certainly be correct, or that total payroll doesn't matter, which seems to me to be incorrect.

If we look at the 2008 payrolls for each team, we see that the playoff teams ranked as follows:

Red Sox #4

White Sox #5

Angels #6

Cubs #7

Dodgers #8

Phillies #13

Brewers #15

Rays #29

(out of 30 teams)

All but one of the playoff teams ranked in the top half by payroll, and the #3 ranked team (Mets) was edged out on the last day of the season for the NL wild card by the #15 team.

So, while it is certainly true that the Yankees (#1), Tigers (#2), and Mets didn't get what they paid for, the next group of teams kind of did.  And apart from the Rays, the only small payroll team that came close to the payoffs was the Twins (#24), who were beaten by the White Sox in the one-game play-in following the end of the regular season.

In baseball, having a big payroll is neither necessary nor sufficient for guaranteeing the playoffs, but it seems highly correlated.  Of course, there are lots of reasons to think that university administrators are different from baseball players, and universities from baseball teams, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Iowa trouble

For those of you who've been reading about the massive flooding here in Iowa in general and Iowa City in specific, yes, it is really bad.

The 380 freeway, which connects Iowa City to the airport and Cedar Rapids to the north, has been closed because of flooding where it crosses the Iowa River.  Not that there's much point to going to Cedar Rapids, since something like 400 blocks there are submerged, including the entire downtown.  To give you an idea of how bad it is, if you needed to get from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids (~20 miles), you need to take a detour via Des Moines -- which means, it's a 240 mile trip!

Traffic within Iowa City and Coralville (right next door) is horrible, and discouraged so as to leave roads clear for emergency vehicles.

For those who don't know, Iowa City is bisected by the Iowa River.  The only reliable way to get from the east side to the west side right now is to take the 80 freeway; the local bridges have been closed or are clogged and in danger of being closed at any time.

The law school has been locked shut for  at least a week . . . .

When my wife went to the supermarket earlier today, it was a madhouse.  (There are three Hy-Vees in Iowa City, but apparently two of them have been closed due to the flooding.)  People are wisely stocking up on water and food, in case the floodwater swamps the water treatment facilities.  In Cedar Rapids, for example, there's a call for water rationing.

The worst of it is that the Iowa River isn't projected to crest until Monday, which means between now and then, the water level will only continue to rise.

(For us personally, we live far enough from the river that we're not in danger of being flooded.  I feel extremely fortunate, and I can't imagine the suffering that others are going through.)

Go away, winter, it's almost May!

Today, while looking out my office window, I saw something that suspiciously like snow drifting down from the sky.

I mean, it's almost May!  What is up with this winter?!?

Neal Stephenson & Iowa City

Neal Stephenson, who's one of the few American sci-fi authors that I can think of who can stand up to a recent wave of British space opera/cyber-punk writers (Richard K. Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, Peter F. Hamilton, and Neal Asher), turns out to have an Iowa City connection!  After graduating from Boston University, Stephenson moved to Iowa City (he'd grown up partly in Ames, Iowa) in 1981, where he worked on his first novel "The Big U."

Yea for Iowa City!