The Occasional Observer

Watching the controversy at Ave Maria School of Law from afar, you are struck by the one-sidedness of the discussion. Opponents to the current administration of Dean Bernard Dobranski and the Board of Governors are doing all the talking and agitating, stirring up student anxiety by leaking their discontent to the student body and the press, and making a public call for the dismissal of the Dean. In their haste to implement a “scorched earth” policy (recently punctuated by Charlie Rice’s letter calling for a schism in the law school—in other words, who cares if the current institution dies?), the “we know better than the Board” portion of the faculty doesn’t seem to care how their public discontent affects: 1) prospective students, 2) the current student body, 3) potential donors to the school, and 4) the press the law school receives. While the guerillas want to blame the administration for the “problems” listed above that are the fallout of the controversy, the fact is that the controversy is of their own making. Thus, the ramifications of the controversy are their own responsibility.

The spark that set the insurgency in motion was the decision by the Law School to consider a move to Ave Maria, Florida. By the way, you read that correctly: “consider a move.” Not: “announce a move,” “rev up the moving vans,” “make plans to hit South of the Border on the way down I-95.” No: consider a move.

I’m no insider, but it’s pretty obvious that the move must have some potential benefit—likely more financial backing from the Domino’s folks and better facilities, since the town and university are brand spanking new—or the Board of Governors wouldn’t have been considering it at all. Well, based on the hysterical reaction to the announcement that the school is considering moving, there must be some obvious reasons that the move would be a colossal blunder. So what are they? Well, from the WSJ article, the one-sided “Whose AMSOL” blog and the Wikipedia entry, I can gather these as the primary “reasons” against moving:

1) Current students don’t want to move.

A curious point, since the Dean and Board say a move couldn’t feasibly take place until after the current students are gone. I don’t know why current students would feel the need to speak for all possible future students. Can’t the future applicants make up their own mind whether the mission of the school is more important than the all-consuming Florida vs. Michigan debate? Or even if—gasp—Florida is preferable to Michigan? I can’t tell the future, and don’t know if future prospective students will be indifferent to the two sites, will prefer Florida to the tropical Ann Arbor climate, or would prefer to stay in Ann Arbor. Maybe they would actually like to be near AMU, in a Catholic University environment, in a town that will have Catholicism at its core. Nah.

The point is current students don’t need to decide for future applicants who can make up their own mind.

2) Moving AMSOL would “take a flourishing institution and uproot it in an early stage. ... It's like moving a young plant; it might not survive the transplant.''

Um, no. In the age of airplanes, you take the three hour flight to Naples and de-plane. You walk into the brand spanking new facilities waiting for you and you’re ready to go. Whether or not certain individuals would prefer to stay in Michigan is another question altogether. Of course, as with any employee whose employer moves, the option is theirs—move or look for a new job.

3) According to the Board’s own consultants, the ABA won’t like a move and could consider it a “major change.” There will be “special scrutiny” (according to the leaked information that miraculously found its way onto Wikipedia) if there’s a lot of faculty turnover.

Well, I for one have no idea how the ABA will approach this situation, if it comes up. But I’ll tell you this: if the Board decides to move, the insurgents have done the university a huge favor (that’s sarcasm) by leaking the consultant’s findings, and including a veiled threat of a walkout of professors. Red-flagging it for the ABA is a move that clearly has the interests of future students at heart.

In the interim, I trust that the Board will take seriously the impact a move would have on their standing with ABA. Accreditation is no small matter, and I'm sure those who have the responsibility to make this decision will give it the weight it deserves. Of course, I'm probably just a stooge for trusting the Board, since they're a bunch of suits that Tom Monaghan pushes around at will. After all, when have you ever seen folks like this guy, this guy, this gal, and this guy demonstrate integrity? Then there's this guy and this guy. Is there any question that Tom wanted a rubber stamp when he "packed the Board" with these mediocrities and shrinking violets?

4) Tom Monaghan’s support is a problem / Tom’s pulling the strings / Tom’s driving away other donors / Tom sucks, etc.

This is my absolute favorite. I know there are a whole slew of billionaire donors waiting around to bankroll AMSOL if Tom walks away. Why, there’s—um, uh, um, never mind. Are you kidding me? Oh yeah, I forgot about the generous offer that was made by the guerillas at AMSOL’s founding, according to Wikipedia:

“Safranek...Falvey and Kenney…offer to contribute their own money to the project and work for a year uncompensated …”

See that, who needs billionaire donors? We have committed, well-off professors who are willing to go without compensation. Need facilities? A multi-million dollar operating budget? Massive funding for scholarships to get a fledgling organization off the ground? Connections that bring in nationally renowned conservative and Catholic figures to sit on your board? No problem. Safranek and Falvey will foot the bill through their pro bono work, along with the mythical 'big money' that’s just waiting for Tom to get out of the way.

Back in the real world, there’s a glut of accomplished lawyers, even committed Catholic lawyers, who would love to be professors. On the other hand, there’s a decided deficit of billionaires who, by their own ingenuity and industry, were able build corporate empires over the course of a lifetime, and then devote the fruits of their labor to building Catholic educational institutions faithful to the magisterium. By the way, we pretty much know there aren’t any others like Tom, else the revolutionary guard would have already started a new school, and the UDM crowd could have set their troublemaking timer back to 6 or 7 years.

Tom Monaghan, not the insurgents, set in motion an institution that has the vision and backing to be an agent of cultural change in American Catholic circles. The Law School has the potential to be a catholicizing influence on our nation’s legal culture. Charlie Rice’s proposed “new school” in Ann Arbor has the backing to run for a few years as the Good Ship Lollipop, with a self-congratulating back-slapping crew who will then be looking for actual employment within a decade. It is impossible that the members of the faculty cannot see this fact.

Questions that need to be asked of the insurgents: What if there are benefits to obtaining more of Tom’s financial support? Or of being located near AMU? Or of having a catholic town as the law school’s home? Or of recruiting students to Florida over Michigan? The insurgents response is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout “Na-na-na-na” as loud as possible.

Therefore, I can only conclude that for reasons of their personal convenience, the muck-stirring members of the faculty and whoever else has teamed up with them (for reasons other than peer intimidation) are simply trying to threaten the law school into abandoning a rational decision making process in favor of a "stay-in-Ann-Arbor-at-all-costs" policy. Whether that’s in the interest of the law school is clearly secondary to their personal desires, and whether the culture-changing potential of a previously dynamic Catholic institution is thrown under the bus is also inconsequential compared to their personal subjective preferences.

Now, I’m a weak man. I don’t have any great virtue to stand on. And I’m someone who can be pretty easily angered (hence this article) and tend to just strike back at those who are doing the wrong thing rather than turn the other cheek. But maybe the most ironic part of this intra-AMSOL dust-up is the difference in examples being set by the two camps.

In this corner, we have the “shout it from the rooftops” guerillas, calling Dean Dobranski, in essence, a stooge, an incompetent manager, a man driven by a conspiratorial agenda instead of his charge. And when they can find the time to stop the insults and demands for the dissolution of the law school, they like to present themselves as more pious than the Administration. You know, calls for the community they’ve driven asunder to “come together,” and sanctimoniously concluding adversarial emails with the Memorare. I’m sure Our Lady is thrilled to be invoked in the “no-confidence” crowd’s recriminations.

In the other corner, we have the Administration, primarily the Dean, who continues to run the law school, attain ABA accreditation about as fast as it can be done, oversee a school that in the span of a few years has students passing the bar at a higher rate than the local “top-10” competition, and continues to get top flight conservative Catholic thinkers onto the Board. Thanks to the Ann Arbor zoning board, he’s been stripped of having AMSOL’s affiliated University nearby. As a result, he’s in the unenviable situation of running a ship that may receive an order to change course when the crew wants to go straight ahead.

While the “no confidence” crowd prefers to throw bombs and doesn’t have to make the hard calls, Dean Dobranski has to do his job and figure out how to deal with the cancer of division. As always, ripping things apart is easy. Leading and keeping things together is hard. So what has he done? It would have been within his legitimate authority to reprimand or remove the insurgents. Rather, he has elected not to expose the selfishness of those who have shown no compunction about subverting his authority. Which side is acting in a more “Catholic” fashion I’ll leave to your judgment, but I’ll warn you in advance, the Dean doesn’t proclaim Our Lady’s support with each email.

Here’s to you, Dean Dobranski. You’ve kept your eye on the ball—running the law school—while your opponents hoped to drag you into the muck of mutual recriminations. I hope to attain one fraction of your self-confidence, thick skin, and trust in Providence over the course of my lifetime.

And on that note, one more “back to the real world” reality check for the no-confidence clan, particularly those running it: in the private sector, the world most people live in, if someone spent half of his day plotting against the boss instead of doing his job, he’d be fired. I know the legal-academic fiefdom doesn’t admit of the need to serve one’s employer, but I guess it’s worth a reminder nonetheless.

Since ending combative tracts sanctimoniously seems to be the order of the day, I guess I’ll follow the MO. Here’s a little bit of scripture for you:

"Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. (Luke 17:1-2)”

Now I don’t know if recruiting students to join a rebellion that threatens legitimate authority, creates a culture of discontent, and tears down a law school founded as a Catholic leaven in the legal culture, would meet the description of “causing a little one to sin.” I hope for the guerillas’ sake it does not. But if I were them, I might keep saying Memorares just in case.