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William C. Altreuter
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Friday, March 07, 2025

 Through the good offices of A's late law partner Diane Bosse I find myself a member of a site visit team for the American Bar Association's Law School Accreditation Committee. Along with six others I'll be spending a very busy few days at a school which I am not going to identify reviewing whether the school continues to meet the standards set by the ABA. Over the summer I went to the training, which was kind of overwhelming. I expect the visit will be more so. At the training we were told that the accreditation criteria for diversity, equity and inclusion were under review as a consequence of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ) and "recent Executive Orders and the Department of Education’s “Dear Colleague” letter dated February 14, 2025." We are presently advised that our team will not be reporting on the school's DEI efforts. 

Naturally, I have thoughts, but my thoughts are not relevant to the assignment I accepted. However, I will say that in my view it is entirely inappropriate for Attorney General Pam Bondi to threaten to have the ABA's accreditation authority pulled if it doesn't scrap DEI standards outright.  



// posted by Bill @ 10:21 AM 0 comments

Thursday, March 06, 2025

I know a lot of serious political science types disliked Nate Silver, but I found Five Thirty Eight generally useful. It changed hands a couple of times, and ABC News had it last. It's been shuttered now, but I am keeping the link on the sidebar for the time being


// posted by Bill @ 7:55 AM 0 comments

Thursday, February 20, 2025

For a few years a couple of other Buffalo Spree writers and I did an annual Academy Awards predictions column. It was fun to write, but looking back on it I am somewhat surprised that the Oscars don't really provide the sort of insight into the zeitgeist that I'd have thought. That said, it's interesting to consider this year's nominees as cultural signifiers. 

What are we to make of this list?


// posted by Bill @ 11:16 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Christgau on Louis Armstrong. Teachout's bio is essential, and Laurence Bergreen's 1997 Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, does an amazing job of describing the New Orleans that Armstrong came from. Gidden's book is likewise essential. I use my FB page for things that should be Outside Counsel posts too often. Here's what I was posting there when I was doing my Armstrong dive

// posted by Bill @ 9:57 AM 1 comments

Thursday, February 06, 2025

Some of my students are getting their LSAT results back this week. I hate the LSAT, which seems to mostly measure how white and advantaged a 20 year old person is. My Buffalo State students seem to fall at one extreme or the other on the LSAT bell curve, and this seem to be pretty much all based on race, although there is a little bit of pure socio-economic statis mixed in as well. The thing is that although it is possible to prep for the exam- in fact, for most students a prep class seems essential- the prep classes seem to be exclusively test prep. I see this all the time with my students' vocabulary. They use the vocab they've learned in test prep classes, but their usage is ever so slightly off. They've learned the words, but they haven't learned the words in any context. The difference, as Mark Twain tells us, is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug, and I just don't know what can be done about it.

// posted by Bill @ 3:27 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Heidegger’s radio

// posted by Bill @ 2:46 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Coltrane's A Love Supreme is 50 years old, and timeless.

// posted by Bill @ 9:36 PM 0 comments

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