Schedule of events here. Out of 25 listed speakers, looks like four are female. Not a single woman speaking or moderating on the entire first day of the conference, or on the first panel of the second day either! But eventually two female law profs get to speak, and one female judge gets to moderate, and then the final panel features Phyllis Schafly, whose bio proclaims her “America’s best-known advocate of the dignity and honor that we as a society owe to the role of fulltime homemaker.” Of course, fortunately (I guess…) for the conference attendees, staying home was never good enough for the ragingly hypocritical Phyllis Schlafly!
Bonus Update: Compare the number of women speaker at the 2006 American Constitution Society Conference with the number at the 2006 Federalist Society National Convention.
I also note that people of color are almost entirely absent from the list of panelists. Over at PrawfsBlog, Rick Garnett lauds the FedSoc conference for being so “diverse” (his quotation marks). He means there are multiple viewpoints represented, which I suppose is true. But surely there’s more to diversity than having white men who disagree with each other.
You are absolutely correct. I’m sorry I didn’t make that observation, and very glad you did.
This is very unsurprising, given my past life as a Federalist. My first FedSoc election in law school turned me completely off of the Feds. The disdainful attitude toward the female candidates, myself included, was palpable. FedSoc is a boys’ club, and they intend to keep it that way. Sadly, they also virtually run the student body at some of the top law schools.
Is this the Female Law Professors blog or the Feminist Law Professors blog? Judging by the post, only women can be feminists.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I’m going to guess that none of the previous posters actually attended the symposium. If they had, they’d know that – if nothing else – a lot of women and a lot of feminist viewpoints were heard, both on and off the stage, that could NEVER be heard at the ACS.
The same could be said for “people of color”. Marcus Cole of Stanford threw down like a rock star, coming out in favor of legalizing drugs and prostitution. What would he know about critical race or feminist theory? His mother was chased out of Nebraska for marrying a black man.
As to the Federalist Society being a “boys club”, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a demographic fact that men tend to be more conservative than women, so the Fed Soc is disproprtionately male – but every male Federalist I know is acutely aware of this and goes out of his way to encourage female participation. My school’s chapter’s president will likely be a woman next year, in part because I support her candidacy.
Instead of bemoaning the lack of women on the schedule, why don’t you focus on the feminist content of the program? Or, here’s a radical feminist idea: Volunteer to be a panelist, or show up in the audience and raise hell. One of the Society’s Olin Scholars did. Coincidentally, she was a feminist studying obscenity law on a $50,000 grant from the Society.
Test
Actually “Phoetus,” careful reading would reveal that the above post went up on Feb 20th, three days before the symposium occurred.
Thank you for pointing that out. Now, would you like to address the actual issues?
What “actual issues” require addressing here?