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The campus chapter of the Federalist Society is far and away the most
conspicuous and active of the 34 student organizations at the University
of Illinois College of Law. Honoraria and traveling expenses for the right
wing presenters who find their way to Champaign Urbana are underwritten by
the national organization. The events attract attention, potential
recruits, and, occasionally, thunderbolts.
Thunder was definitely in the air last April when Lino Graglia came to
town. A law professor at the University of Texas, he is a well-traveled
Federalist attraction--and a racial provocateur. Graglia was to lecture on
originalism and the Constitution. But earlier pronouncements he had made
concerning the "cultural deficiencies" of affirmative action recipients
set the tone for his visit.
Minority groups organized, staged a sit-out, and leafleted attendees with
Graglia's most inflammatory rhetoric-including a declamation that "Blacks
and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with whites in
selective institutions." And then, as if to throw fuel on the fire,
Graglia stood in front of TV cameras and affirmed what he had said before.
Campus liberals accused the Federalist Society of goading the law school's
minority students into raising hell, in part so the student Feddies could
appear paragons of reason by contrast. But the president of the law
school's Federalist chapter, Scott Hoffert, claimed he couldn't understand
why Graglia's visit touched off a ruckus: "We never expected that
response," he said. "Accusations that we invited him here to deliberately
insult minority students are absurd. We foster discussion."
Former federal appellate judge Abner Mikva, an adjunct professor at the
law school, expressed "amazement" over the "incredible influence" of the
140 campus Federalist chapters: "Where so many of the nation's leaders are
groomed, the Federalists manipulate the landscape. It was once held that
liberals ran the law schools. The liberals had the name but the
Federalists own the game. For students on the go, there is no where else
to go."
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