Fossil Faculty

Don't you just love open minded faculty?

Here's an example from today's New York Times:

Robert S. Summers, who has taught at Cornell Law School for about 40 years, announced this week — in a detailed, footnoted memorandum — that he would ban laptop computers from his class on contract law.

“I would ban that too if I knew the students were using it in class,” Professor Summers said of the iPhone, after the device and its capabilities were explained to him. “What we want to encourage in these students is active intellectual experience, in which they develop the wide range of complex reasoning abilities required of the good lawyers.”

I guess the good professor just can't seem to figure out how to use technology to offer his students an ""active intellectual experience, in which they develop the wide range of complex reasoning abilities required of the good lawyers.” Move over, fossil faculty... some of us can actually do that without the need to ban anything. In fact, in my experience, it works in just the opposite way. Technology actually enhances the learning process, and does not detract from it. But this professor doesn't appear to realize that. Makes you also wonder if this guy actually changed his lecture notes over those 40 years.

My bet is that he knows a lot about contracts... but very little about technology. Notice that the iPhone and its capabilities had to be explained to him.

While he is in the mood to ban things, maybe he would consider banning himself as a legal resource that is definitely obsolete and out of touch with today's law practice realities.

After all, how does he expect contract lawyers to communicate in the 21st Century? Using pens? Maybe even quills?

Or maybe it's just that this professor teaches the HISTORY of contract law and just want to be left alone to be part of it!