Alpha Dog

About this Episode

It’s our back to school episode. We pick up in the middle of a conversation about the order of the months of the calendar and then turn to our main topic: how to teach law. With Mehrsa Baradaran we delve into why classes might turn on you, how to manage the awkward student-teacher relationship, and presumptions of competence and incompetence. We dig into Mehrsa’s Teaching While Woman blog post and all our experiences with privileges, failures, and successes. First names, last names, cold-calling? Authenticity, professionalism, and, obviously, nudist colonies. Also: Mehrsa’s aspiration to be the Postmaster General and Joe’s to be, somehow, a “Lord High Chancellor."

This show’s links:

• Mehrsa Baradaran’s faculty profile and last appearance on Oral Argument
• The Solar Hijra calendar and the Islamic calendar
• Mehrsa Baradaran, Teaching While Woman
• Lyrissa Lidsky, Ten (okay, Nineteen) Tips for New Law Professors
• Jodi Kantor, Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity
• Wikipedia on Implicit association testing
• Project Implicit
• Paul Ford, How to Be Polite
• Christian’s imagined monocle-based approach to formality in the classroom:
• The Postmaster General and Executive Leadership Team (note: The current Postmaster General is Patrick Donahoe.)
• About the office of the Postmaster General (including information concerning the first Postmaster General, no spoilers, but…)