There is not a doubt in my mind that many, if not most of the world's leading citizens have been sitting on the edge of their seats for the past couple of weeks (or exploding in an excrecative tirade of disgust, disbelief, and sorrow in the past couple of days). As a side note, a warm congratulations to Drs. Gross, Politzer, Wilczek, Axel, and Buck. That said, however, the fact of the matter IS that there are some Nobel laureates that hold a dearer place in my cholesterol-plaqued heart than others.

For instance, I can't, for the life of me, respect anyone who has won more than one Nobel Prize in their lifetime. It's a vile, odious, and entirely ostentatious (not to mention redundant) feat. You know who you are (with exceptions listed below).

Happily, however, this isn’t all of them. In fact, I can honestly say that I like some Nobel Prize winners more than others. This feels somehow wrong – it’s like liking one superhero more than another, especially after both have worked so hard to make my life better. But in my defense: come on!

How could you not have a soft spot for Drummer and Physicist extraordinaire R. P. Feynman? or beret-wearing, vitamin C-touting Linus Pauling (rather, anyone named Linus, really)? I guess I shouldn’t be ashamed about it -- that I prefer the small-statured, sari-wearing Mother Teresa to some large Swiss with a handlebar moustache (no matter what his contributions to inorganic chemistry), or that I like David Baltimore, Amartya Sen and Barbara McClintock more than I do other honorable recipients. Indeed, the prize doesn’t bear less money, nor the honor less glory at the bidding will of my (let’s face it) somewhat random whim.

I’d just like to make the distinction that there are Nobel Prize winners, and then there are Nobel Prize winners.

Amber Taylor argues that universities should let the military recruit on campus, the better to revolt from within:

Shouldn't liberal law students want to swamp the JAG Corps, along with the rest of the armed services? How else can we effect real change in the military culture of homophobia if the only people who sign up are those who already subscribe to that culture? Change it from within, I say. Every liberal college student who joins the military is a gay-friendly officer.

It seems to me that even if Yale Law School thought that letting the military use the Fall Interviewing Program would help the military, it should also keep in mind a duty it has to its students. A duty, that is, to let its students make choices about what kind of contributions they want to make to the world, even when the university thinks those choices are wrong and misguided. That's something like a fundamental tenet of academic freedom.

Indeed, one of the things I liked much about the umpteen speeches we've received on "public interest" is the emphasis Deans Koh and Kronman placed on letting us define our own view of the public interest, and then work to acheive it. Sometimes that will put YLS students at direct cross-purposes: One person works to lock folks up and another person works to release them; one person pushes to eliminate redistributive taxes, another pushes for a Shareholder Society; one person fights to maintain heterosexual marriage and "traditional" family values, another fights to blow them wide open. One mark of a great school is a desire to host those intellectual battles, not just decide them.

Though the university is substantively in the right here (Don't Ask, Don't Tell is bad), it oughtn't follow that it's good to enforce this view in this way. But this isn't just for Amber's reason, that you work substantive reform by infiltrating the military more than by boycotting it. It's also because part of the way great schools attract great students and faculty is by promising them that the school will stand behind them even when they say things that are dangerous and unpopular.

None of this necessarily solves the Fall Interviewing Program dilemma-- Yale's right to guard its own moral turf might outweigh the duty to let students make their own choices here-- but we should think about whether it would make more sense for YLS to put some trust in its students to make the right call.

I have before me a little rainbow pin designed to express ... some sort of solidarity with Yale Law Students in the Solmon Amendment fight. I must decide whether it expresses something I believe.

The trouble comes when one thinks both sides are quite wrong. Which side does one take in the fight if one thinks:

1: That the military ought not discriminate against people on the basis of their sexuality.

2: That universities ought to have just as much of a constitutional right to association as the boy scourts do.

3: That universities ought not exercise this right to keep military recruiters off campus.

4: That even if they do kick out military recruiters, the government ought not enact penalties on universities that do.

After Will so kindly posted a picture of himself, I am left with one conclusion.

Will is trying to get a job modeling for RedHat.

Some un-toward speculation over at the Slithery D has focused on what Will Baude looks like, &c. So in the interests of full disclosure, I direct you to this highly-incomplete bio page, replete with author photo.