Lani Guinier

I went to the 8:45(ish) talk by Lani Guinier at the law school this morning. I didn't know what I was I for, if it would be a lecture or what, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not a lecture. She came in and started taking questions. She was provocative in her opinions, and she said something that has been one of my pet peeves for such a long time: There is a trend of entitlement among some in higher education. Yes. Yes. Yes. I've been saying this for some time now.

She made some interesting points about democracy. One that I found particularly interesting was how groups that one would think of as being "left leaning" (NAACP, ACLU for instance) were really just being run about an elite group of "Exec" members, and the grassroots members were really just financial supporters. They don't have any decision making ability at all. Someone was trying to make the connection between that and the Republican party (being run by a small group of people) and she quickly corrected them by saying BOTH parties operated in pretty much the same manner.

She also talked about someone getting 51% of the vote, and 100% of the power. All very interesting.