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University of Chicago ranked 3rd in Media Exposure

University of Chicago ranks third most covered in global media, after Harvard and Columbia, according to research group Global Lanuage Monitor (GLM).

The ranking is based on internet as well as traditional media, and must have something to do with the vast amount of research coming out of the University, as well as its association with Barack Obama.

GLM announced earlier this month that English would soon gain its 1,000,000th word.

The Recession Specialist: Darth Inflator

Booth School of Business professor of finance John H. Cochrane used the force, if you will, on the threat of giving the government too much leeway at a panel in New York last week, part of a conference on the Depression and the New Deal featuring some economic big wigs.

"When the federal government keeps changing the rules, it’s like having Darth Vader in control, John H. Cochrane, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said during a panel. 'I have changed the deal,” he intoned like Vader, the “Star Wars” villain. “Pray I don’t change it any further.'"

This seems to put Cochrane, who's been teaching at the Univesity since 1991, firmly in the laissez-faire, Adam Smith-style liberal column the University is known for, and that would make sense, given that the conference was co-hosted by Amity Shales (a writer who has decried Roosevelt's intervention into the markets as unnecessarily prolonging the Great Depression) and the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at NYU (certainly snobbish if not conservative), and featured other panelists such as Anna Schwartz (who co-authored the highly important, A Monetary History of the United States, with polarizing (ha!) U of C personality Milton Friedman) to give some idea of the company he kept during the week-long conference.

However, your faithful Specialist's midi-Chlorian count seems to be down today, as evidenced by the fact that he didn't understand what even the titles to Cochrane's articles mean, so I'll leave that for your comments, below.


As reported in: Patricia Cohen's April 3 article, "New Deal Revisionism: Theories Collide," in the New York Times' Arts Section. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/arts/04depr.html?_r=1

Obama fails to draw student attention away from 172

Politico has a report today profiling U of C student's reactions to Obama sightings in Hyde Park, in particular the brief flashes of the president-elect as he enters and exits the Regents Park apartment complex, on South Lake Shore Drive, where he works out every morning.

John McCain called him "the biggest celebrity in the world," but Barack Obama's appearance outside the Regents Park Luxury Apartments on a freezing-cold Thursday morning didn't move a half-dozen University of Chicago students waiting on a salt-and-snow layered sidewalk for the Chicago Transit Authority's 172 bus.

Full story here.

Scalia faults Law School's increasingly liberal bent

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who spent five years lecturing at the University of Chicago Law School from 1977 to 1982, criticized what he sees as the Law School's move toward liberal ideologies at a talk before a group of conservative lawyers earlier this week in Chicago.

Scalia told the Federalist Society of Lawyers that he bemoans the crop of newer, less traditional classes that now supplement the more "serious" classes that exclusively comprised the Law School curricula during his time as a lecturer.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Scalia reflected on his own legal training as a law student.

"I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not "Law and Poverty." Take serious classes. There's so much law to learn. Don't waste your time," Scalia told the audience, according to today's issue of the Chicago Sun-Times.

"I regret it," Scalia added, refering to the Law School's political and ideological shifts. "I don't think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time. I would not recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as a rigorous and conservative law school."

The Wall Street Journal blog also picked up on the Sun-Times story.

Does your U of C vote count?

Will your vote make a difference this coming November?

If you're a University of Chicago student registered in Illinois, blogger Jon Bruner of Forbes magazine says no.

Despite the hordes of Columbia students who turned out to support Obama at the September 11 forum on Columbia's Morningside Heights campus this Thursday, Bruner argues that pre-election hype isn't necessarily indicative of who will actually show up at the polls come November 4.

Bruner's hypothesis isn't without academic backing either. His article cites an NYU political scientist on voting trends among young people ages 18 to 24.

At a forum for incoming New York University students a few weeks ago, NYU political scientist Rogan Kersh told the students, “you might say you’re going to vote, but something will happen; you’ll oversleep, you’ll have a test, you’ll forget to register.”

For die-hard Obama supporters at the U of C, what Bruner writes next about University of Chicago votes and those from other blue state peer institutions might prove alternatively depressing or infuriating.

In any case, the Electoral College sees to it that the votes of many Columbia students won’t have any effect on the presidential selection process. Nor will many student votes at the University of Chicago, Harvard, or the University of California at Berkeley, for that matter. Election results in New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and California are practically foregone conclusions, and savvy students at those institutions may well do better to stay home and study than to vote in those states. Both candidates might have preferred that last night’s event had taken place at schools in State College, Pa., Madison, Wis., or Gainesville, Fla.

College students are certainly excited, but that is not a guarantee that they will actually make a difference in the upcoming election.

Post your thoughts and comments on Bruner's predictions for college voter turnout.

TIME magazine profiles Obama and the University of Chicago Law School

Today's issue of TIME features a short piece on Obama during his twelve-year stint as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

The article also mentions our very own Hyde Park--"an enclave of tree-lined streets, upscale condos and cafés." (Really!? When has Hyde Park offered anything other than a dearth of fun?)

Read the full article here.