Despite our numbers, librarians’ families are generally an invisible community. For example, I can’t think of any TV shows or movies that featured librarians as parents, so we don’t get any Hollywood representation.

Because our stories are so rarely told, I’m sharing a few stories now.

Saturdays in the Library

Gail Schlachter at Cal State Long Beach circa mid-1970s

My mom worked as a reference librarian at Cal State Long Beach in the mid-1970s. She was the single parent of two children (me and my sister, 3 years older than me), working full-time and living on a librarian’s salary.

This was an era before workplaces routinely offered childcare to their employees. When mom had to work the reference desk on weekends or other days we weren’t in school, she couldn’t always obtain or afford childcare. Instead, she’d schlep her two young children with her to the library while she worked. She’d set us up in a corner of the library, away from the reference desk but in line-of-sight. We’d play, make art, and read while she worked.

As kids, we didn’t love this. It meant we’d be stuck indoors on beautiful sunny Southern California days. And if we had to be indoors, we’d much rather watch TV. Nowadays, if we had to go to the library with mom, she could set us up with an electronic device so we could binge-watch TikTok videos for hours.

Back then, we didn’t have anything so portable as a mobile device for entertainment. Instead, we brought all of our entertainment with us, which meant we’d bring stacks of our own books and art supplies, enough to keep us entertained, or at least distracted, for hours. I was a geography nerd back then, so I would also bring my 12-inch globe. I’d spend hours spinning the globe and memorizing far-away country names and capitals and rivers and mountain ranges. I can only imagine how I must have looked to library patrons…a young child in the library’s corner, randomly studying his globe.

My sister and I were good kids, mostly, and we didn’t want to make trouble for our mom as she worked. But we were kids, and sometimes youthful energy would overwhelm us. We’d start getting antsy and rowdy as kids do. Our mom would have to shush us, as librarians are always stereotyped as doing.

Family Vacations at the ALA Annual Meeting

Mom attended the ALA Annual Meeting faithfully. The conference was usually a highlight of her year—a chance for her to see her friends and colleagues and nerd out on librarianship. Bringing two small kids in tow surely wasn’t ideal for her, but it was her reality.

She made the best of the situation. We’d tag along with her to the social events. We enjoyed the free food, but we were bored by the adult conversations. The novelty of having young children at the professional event delighted the other attendees. Whenever I run into one of mom’s friends from the old days, they will inevitably (and truthfully) say “I remember when you were this tall!”

For us as kids, the conference exhibits were the highlight of the Annual Meeting. The 1970s was a different era: libraries had money to spend, and publishers competed to get it. The publishers would put on lavish displays in the exhibit hall, their booths loaded with free schwag. We’d grab an ALA totebag and then make our way up and down the exhibit aisles, taking one of everything. It was a bit like Halloween, except we didn’t have to say “trick or treat.” Many vendors had candy and pencils or pens, which we grabbed anyway despite their banality, but occasionally we’d find little toys or stuffed animals or items we could actually enjoy. We’d take our stuffed bags up to the hotel room and compare our loot, showing off the goodies we had found but our sibling had missed.

After my mom transitioned into the publishing industry, libraries remained a part of our family vacations. We’d go check out the local public libraries to see if they had copies of my mom’s books. It would be a great joy being in some obscure (to us) corner of the country, seeing my mom’s books on the shelves and imagining how she was helping people we’d never meet.

An Archivist’s Tale

My mom kept papers from everything. We sorted through dozens of boxes of papers after her death. She kept our art doodles from the long afternoons in the Cal State Long Beach library. She kept the internal staff newsletters for the Cal State Long Beach library, written on typewriters and mimeographed. She kept her ALA papers, which now reside at the ALA Archive at University of Illinois. She kept a complete collection of the hundreds of books she published, which now reside at San Jose State University.

Like my mom, I’m an archivist. Over the years, I’ve cleared out some of my papers, but I still have boxes and boxes of papers in my garage. I have all of my childhood correspondence, papers from jobs when I was a young adult, and printouts of virtually every email I sent and received in the 1990s. I don’t envy the chore my kids will face sorting through my paper archives if I don’t clean them up before I die. At least my electronic archives won’t force them to park one of their cars outside their garage.

Freedom of Expression

My mom firmly believed in public access to information. She saw libraries as a way to reduce information divides and make available, free of charge, credible and reliable information to everyone.

For decades, this function of libraries has been under attack by censors who wish to control information flows to advance their normative or partisan ends. The library community is one of the OG defenders of free speech. In this respect, libraries are like canaries in the free speech coal mine, usually at the vanguard of the censorship battles. My mom started fighting those battles in the 1970s, and I’m sure she’d be aghast today at how censors continue to aggressively implement the same condemnable playbook decades later.

Even as the Internet plays an increasing role in our information ecosystem, the services provided by libraries remain a threat to those in power, and efforts to censor libraries are taking place in parallel with their efforts to censor the Internet. Just as libraries have been targets for decades, censors are trying to shape Internet content to serve their normative or partisan objectives. I’ve seen this story before through my mom’s eyes. As a law professor, I spend much of my professional time today carrying the OG free speech banner, with an emphasis on digital battlegrounds. My mom’s legacy includes my efforts to stand up for the freedom of information.

About the Author: Eric Goldman is a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law in California. He acknowledges Dusty Springfield for the title inspiration.

The post I Was the Son of a Librarian appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

How He Got Here

My son graduated high school during the pandemic shutdown in 2021. He went through the college application process in his senior year and even put down a deposit, but he never had the chance to do any college tours. After some reflection, he felt he wasn’t ready yet for college. Instead, he did a gap year at Tivnu, which proved to be a wonderful experience for him.

After Tivnu, he wanted help navigating the college experience due to his neurodiversity. This led him to CIP in Berkeley, where he could get professional support to enhance the skills he needs for college and life. CIP works with students attending Berkeley City College (BCC), so he started CIP in 2022 and BCC in 2023. While at BCC, he worked part-time, first as a law firm file clerk and then as a math tutor. He completed his Associates’ degree in math this semester.

The Drexel Decision

As a transfer destination, Drexel stood out on several fronts. First, it has leaned into support for neurodiverse students, which gave us some comfort that he could succeed there without CIP’s support.

Second, Drexel’s co-op program will help my son build the kind of work experience and professional identity that can help him make his next move after graduation. Drexel’s neurodiversity support includes help with the job placement function, which will surely benefit him, and which reduces the risk of him bouncing back home post-graduation (a common outcome for many college students nowadays, especially neurodiverse ones).

Third, the math department seemed like a good fit. The math department was big enough to provide all of the options my son will want, but the total number of math majors and the associated class sizes were small enough that students appeared to get personal attention from the professors.

Finally, I was impressed with the overall vibe at Drexel. It has all the resources my son will need, but it is not as overwhelming and impersonal as a big public university. The students we met with were focused on their professional development goals. The Jewish community seemed acceptable (we looked at Drexel’s Title VI complaint but could not validate the concerns).

Drexel’s main competition for my son’s enrollment was UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley is such a compelling option: his mom and 3 of his grandparents are alums, the city of Berkeley is a wonderful (if complicated) college town that he already knows well, he could continue his neurodiversity support with CIP, and it has better weather and is closer to home compared to Philadelphia.

And yet, the UC Berkeley transfer admit day was not great for him. For me, the standout feature was that the Berkeley speakers repeatedly hyped how students should feel honored that they got admitted to such a prestigious school, but not one speaker talked about employment outcomes. It was like job placement considerations were a non-priority to the institution. (I know that’s not true, but the silence loudly communicated that message). UC Berkeley provides stats about employment outcomes by year and major (yay for transparency), and the numbers for their math department were not comforting. A number of other red and yellow flags arose during the day, such as transfer students’ difficulties enrolling in upper-division math classes and getting dorm rooms. And, of course, UC Berkeley is a complicated community, especially for Jews.

* * *

My son made a major adult decision moving across the country to a new community, a new time zone, and a lot more weather drama. I am proud of him for creating great transfer options for himself, navigating the transfer decision-making process smartly, and being willing to take some risks. #ProudDad #ProudDrexelDad.

The post My Son’s Next College Destination appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

______

#ProudDaughter

Dear Dad,

I see you out there, feeding the stray cats when you think no one is looking. I see you, running around the house once the sun starts setting. You yell at everyone: “time is ticking!” and hustle us out the door to admire the colors. You take pictures of the sunset with your ancient Panasonic camera, and complain that it doesn’t capture the bright pinks you so love. I see you, pointing out the orange California poppies that bloom every spring. You appreciate them whenever you see them.

In many ways, you taught me how to love. Your love is daily, hard work that you start from the moment you wake up at 6 AM every morning. You would drive me to school in the morning before work. You would nicely cut up fruit from the Farmer’s Market and put it in a bowl next to my homework and call it a “cornucopia.” You would insist on taking high quality photos of every piece of art I’ve ever made. Your Zoom background is my watercolor of baby Yoda, peeking above your shoulder for everyone to see. You post all of my life events with a #ProudDad hashtag (and usually a few emojis). 

I know that you never got cornucopias growing up. Or a dad. So, you invented being Dad. You invented cornucopias and our annual Dina-Daddy trips. You woke up at 6 AM every morning to get started on loving me because you didn’t get a blueprint of how fathers should love their daughters.

I definitely don’t wake up at 6 AM. But once I do get up, preferably around noon, I love just like you. I work hard. I put full effort into every aspect of my life. I notice the tulips planted around the University of Oregon campus for spring term. Whenever I get the pleasure of seeing a cat, I pet them gently and take photos of them from every angle. I see how every day is new and different; an opportunity to love. Your catchphrase: “Another beautiful day in California.” I live in Oregon now. “Another beautiful day in Oregon.”

I love you, Dad.

Love,

Dina

Fig 1. You in a business meeting

Fig 2. #ProudDad and #ProudDaughter

Fig 3. Love, as you taught me

The post My Daughter’s Father’s Day Letter appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

* * *

Although we were three years apart, I “skipped” a grade so that I was only two years behind her academically. I spent much of my K-12 education trying to close that two year gap and catch up to Sandy.

It’s well-known that younger siblings benefit from their older siblings. As one study summarized, “First-born siblings engage in leadership, teaching, caregiving, and helping roles, whereas second-born siblings are more likely to imitate, follow, take on the role of learner, and elicit care and help.”

One analogy is to drafting in biking. Sandy was out in front, setting the pace. I was drafting in her slipstream, able to move forward faster and with less effort because she was doing the extra work. Or a hiking analogy: if you are climbing a hill covered in snow or up a sand dune, the easiest path is to walk in someone else’s footprints.

That’s pretty much what I did. Sandy blazed the trail, and I followed. I took the same courses she took, from the same teachers. I got involved in the same student groups she was involved in. In high school, we did Junior Statesmen together, and I got into student government because she did. She worked a summer at McDonalds (and was employee-of-the-month); they hired her little brother because they loved her, but I was never employee-of-the-month. I initially got so much goodwill from teachers and other adults because everyone loved Sandy Sunshine. They got quite a surprise when a moody introvert showed up instead.

* * *

Even though we are different personalities, in many other respects we’re essentially twins (not that you could tell from the photo below). In particular, since I graduated high school, we’ve pursued different professional paths but keep ending up in the same place.

Our first convergence was in college. Sandy started at UC Davis and spent a year abroad in Israel. During that time, I graduated high school and enrolled at UCLA to study economics. Coming back from her year abroad, Sandy decided to transfer to UCLA to be closer to our mom and grandma (and me). I was on a three year schedule and she was on a five year schedule, and that’s how we both graduated at the same time from the same university.

We even held a joint college graduation party.

Sandy went to Michigan for her masters in library and information science, while I worked two years in LA in commercial real estate. Sandy decided to continue towards her PhD, which led her back to UCLA. I decided to pursue a JD/MBA and that led me back to UCLA as well. So once again we were at the same institution at the same time. During this time, we ended up living just a few miles from each other on the west side of LA. This time, I graduated before Sandy.

After graduation, I decided to pursue Internet Law, which led me to the Silicon Valley. I worked at a law firm in Palo Alto, then as General Counsel of an Internet company on the Peninsula. Sandy got her PhD and a teaching job in Arizona. But after a few years, she and Jay decided to leave academia and get industry jobs, which led both of them to HP. They moved to Palo Alto in 1998, and we were in the same community again.

Another amazing convergence took place in 2001, when we were on a panel together at Comdex in Las Vegas regarding privacy. By that point, I was a Goldman and Sandy was a Hirsh, so the organizers had no reason to know of our sibling relationship—though it became pretty apparent when we stood side-by-side.

In 2002, I decided to pursue an academic career, which took me and my family to Milwaukee. Four years later, I got a full-time position at Santa Clara University, which brought me and my family back to the Bay Area. We bought a house in Mountain View, just 7 miles from the Hirsh’s Palo Alto residence. At SCU, I held a dual appointment as an professor and as an administrator directing the law school’s High Tech Law Institute.

In 2010, Sandy got the opportunity to direct the School of Information at San Jose State, where she was also appointed to the faculty. At that point, we were both professors and academic administrators. News about the Schlachter “twins” took over the SJSU Information School home page.

In 2020, Sandy got “promoted” into the role of Associate Dean of the College of Information, Data & Society at San Jose State. A year later, I got “promoted” to Associate Dean for Research at Santa Clara Law.

And so that takes us to 2024, when Sandy and I both held Associate Dean titles at universities located 4 miles from each other, residing in houses 7 miles apart. We went our separate ways when Sandy graduated high school in Santa Barbara, only to find ourselves 40+ years later back together again, with the virtually the same job titles and in each other’s backyards.

[Reminder: in conjunction with Sandy’s birthday, I made a Spotify playlist and my daughter made a painting.]

The post A Tribute to My Sister Sandy Hirsh on Her 60th Birthday (Part 2 of 2) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Many of you probably assume it’s time for the little brother to roast his big sister. After all, I’m a GenXer and I’ve been honing my snarking skills for decades, since I was in the womb. And if this were Sandy’s 30th or 40th birthday, I probably would let it fly. But as much fun as it would be to take the express train to Snarktown, this is a 60th birthday and, as a sign of my newfound maturity, I’ve decided to respect my elders and actually try to be nice. Sandy, my birthday gift to you is that I’m keeping the embarrassing revelations about your youth secret until your next milestone birthday. You’re welcome.

* * *

Sandy and I are 3 years apart. We are both early-stage GenXers. Our parents were wartime babies, so they are technically late-stage Silent Generation instead of Boomers. But like many boomers, they married young, the relationship didn’t work out, they divorced, and they both went on to achieve personal and professional success separately.

Our parents’ split defined our childhood. We grew up in a single-parent household with a full-time working mom. It was just the three of us, but in fact for many hours of the day it was just the two of us. Like many GenXers, we were latchkey children. At a young age, we arrived home to an empty home with no adult figure awaiting us. In practice, for much of my childhood, Sandy was the closest thing I had to a parent for several hours a day.

Sandy and I have very different personalities. To oversummarize, I was a socially awkward and nerdy introvert, and Sandy was the socially gregarious extrovert. Sandy’s nickname was “Sandy Sunshine,” though I have no idea where that came from.

Some of you may not appreciate how significant Sandy’s interpersonal skills were to her childhood. Our mom shrewdly recognized that California real estate was a great investment, and she moved constantly in an effort to “trade up” and parlay her accumulated equity. This was a smart financial decision, but it came at a significant personal cost.

After our parents separated, we moved to the Los Angeles basin, where we lived for 5 years. We then moved to Davis, California, where we lived for another 5 years. We then moved to Santa Barbara, where we lived for another 4 years until I graduated high school. Across all of those relocations, we lived in 7 different houses.

The constant moving fragmented Sandy’s K-12 education. Over 13 years, she attended 9 different schools.

The relocation disruptions meant that Sandy was constantly saying goodbye to her current friends and having to make all-new ones. I’ve often wondered if Sandy’s social gregariousness was forged by these trials, or if it was innate and the secret to her ability to survive the dislocations.

In contrast to Sandy’s disjointed education record, mom’s moves synched up with my normal school transitions, so I only attended 4 schools total (K-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-12). Even that degree of disruption was a lot for a socially awkward person like myself. I took a long time to build friendships and never built a lot, and each relocation broke the social progress I made.

I always envied Sandy’s social skills. I aspired to emulate her gregariousness because I knew that I would get more out of life if I could. Much of my life through my mid-twenties was defined by my efforts to be “more like Sandy Sunshine.”

Because of my difficulties making other friends, Sandy was always my best friend growing up. She was the one constant relationship in my life, the one person close to my age that I could count on, the social foundation I didn’t have to rebuild with each move.

When I got married, there was no doubt who should be my “best man.” Despite defying the gender expectations for the role, I knew who belonged at my side on that most important day. After all, she had stood by my side every other day.

[Stay tuned for Part 2]

BONUS 1: I prepared a Spotify playlist for Sandy’s birthday. It’s meant more as a soundtrack of her life than as a list of her “favorite” songs.

BONUS 2: My daughter made this painting of pomegranates as a birthday present for my sister.

The post A Tribute to My Sister Sandy Hirsh on Her 60th Birthday (Part 1 of 2) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

Gail Schlachter, Palo Alto

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my mom’s death. In many ways, it feels just like yesterday. I still think about her every day, and the entire family feels her influences constantly.

But, as the expression says, life goes on. This blog post rounds up some of what mom has missed since her death.

My mom derived great joy from celebrating her family’s achievements. She would make significant personal sacrifices to attend family events big and small, from major milestone birthdays to everyday school performances. She would have loved to be a part of our regular family gatherings for birthdays and Jewish holidays. She especially would have celebrated these major milestone events [this list is just for the Goldman family; my sister and the Hirsh/Halsner families would have their own list]:

• My son’s bar mitzvah
• My daughter’s bat mitzvah
• My son’s graduation from junior high
• My daughter’s graduation from junior high (disrupted by COVID)
• My son’s 18th birthday (disrupted by COVID)
• My son’s graduation from high school
• My daughter’s 18th birthday
• My son’s 21st birthday
• My daughter’s graduation from high school

At each of these events, we have felt my mom’s virtual presence, but she would have much preferred to be there in person.

Nowadays, my mom would be kvelling with grandmotherly pride at my kids’ college journeys–my daughter at University of Oregon and my son at Berkeley City College (I’ll have a post about the next step in his college journey shortly).

My mom would have also taken great pride in my professional and personal milestone events over the past decade. The ones I think would have meant the most to her:

• My Congressional testimony on the Consumer Review Fairness Act
• My Congressional testimony on FOSTA/SESTA (1, 2)
• My 50th birthday
• My university award for career scholarly achievement
• My “promotion” to Associate Dean for Research
• My university award for curricular innovation

(Other major milestones from the last decade relate directly to her passing, including liquidating all of her properties, closing her estate, and purchasing a vacation rental on the Mendocino Coast with her money. Those milestones would not have existed if she were still alive today).

With respect to my wife, she would marvel at the relative normalcy of my wife’s life 11+ years after her Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis.

On less happy notes, my mom missed the death of her dog Laddie, the death of her husband, Trump 1.0, the COVID pandemic, and Trump 2.0. All of these developments would have caused her great distress.

Blog Posts About Gail Schlachter Hauser’s Death

* I’ve Finished Work on My Mom and Stepdad’s Estates
* The Legacies of My Mom, Dr. Gail Schlachter Hauser (1943-2015)
* Announcing the “Gail Schlachter Financial Aid Directory Collection” at San José State University Library Special Collections & Archives
* How Reference Service Press Books Acknowledge My Mom’s Career & Life (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* PROJECT COMPLETE: I’ve Finished Selling My Mom’s Real Estate Portfolio
* Announcing the Helen B. and Lewis E. Goldstein Scholarship Fund
* Remarks From Gail Schlachter’s Induction Into the California Library Hall of Fame (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Memorial For My Mom At The ALA Annual Meeting (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Patricia Schuman’s Remembrance of Gail Schlachter Hauser (1943-2015)
* Dimi Berkner’s Eulogy For My Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Remembrance From My Mom’s Lifelong Friend, David Weber (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Remembrance from Sumyyah Bilal
* An Example of How My Mom’s Books Helped Students (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* My Sister’s Eulogy For Our Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* My Eulogy For My Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* From my wife: Gail Schlachter, My Mother-in-law, Remembered
* Selected Remembrances of Gail Schlachter Hauser (1943-2015)
* My First Mother’s Day Without My Mom (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015)
* Signs That My Mom Is Still Thinking of Us (Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015)
* My Mom’s Idea of a “Really Good Day” (Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015)
* Initial Reflections on Losing a Parent (Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015)
* My Mom Died: Gail Schlachter Hauser, 1943-2015

The post Reflecting on the 10 Year Anniversary of My Mom’s Death (Gail Schlachter Hauser 1943-2015) appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

A rush of warm adrenaline surges through my body. I hear the buzz more than I feel the pain. I’m in the Triangle Tattoo Shop and Museum in Fort Bragg, California – a tiny NorCal coastal town. It’s tall and narrow, with funky staircases and walls crammed with framed tattoo pictures. It reminds me of 12 Grimmauld Place – a magical building impossibly squished between the houses of normality. My mom is next to me, squeezing my sweaty palm.

For years, I had shown her sketches. “No,” she said while slicing tomatoes in the kitchen. “No,” she said while filling in her sudoku. “No,” she said while stretching on her yoga mat. I show her a new sketch, this time of a manta ray – maybe I’ll get a different answer while she scrolls her iPad? “Hm,” she says. “Maybe,” she says. “Show me more sketches,” she says.

Maybe it was that I was leaving for college. Maybe it was that she has a Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis. Maybe it was because we had swam with the most beautiful manta rays in Hawaii. Maybe it was because in Moana, the dead grandma comes back to her granddaughter in the form of a manta ray. But somehow, we ended up in the magical Triangle Tattoo Shop and Museum in Fort Bragg California, getting matching manta ray tattoos on our wrists. They now tie us together 561 miles apart. I know that someday when she passes, they will tie us together through more than 561 miles of distance.

The post The Story of My Daughter’s Tattoo appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

[Once again, Prof. Mark Lemley inspired me to act.]

I’ve had a Facebook account for almost 20 years. It’s been an essential part of my online identity and daily routine ever since. I’ve shared my good and bad news, I’ve deepened friendships and made some new ones, I’ve kept up with people I care about, and I’ve learned a lot. Facebook has made my life materially and demonstrably better over the years.

(Note: I never installed Instagram or Facebook on my phone and don’t plan to. I use WhatsApp very rarely and only for limited purposes).

Facebook’s recent moves–seemingly made principally to please Pres. Trump–have bewildered me. I never assumed Facebook genuinely cared about its users’ interests, and Facebook has repeatedly acquiesced to foreign censorship edicts. Despite my lowered expectations, I’m still disappointed. Facebook’s changes are unlikely to improve the experience for any good-faith user. Further, Facebook proved that it will discard its editorial autonomy for low-probability odds of obtaining political favoritism. Even if my day-to-day experience on Facebook probably won’t change, Facebook’s valorization of low-quality content makes me uncomfortable being here. (I had an identical reaction to Musk’s changes to Twitter).

Faceboo-xiting will not be an overnight thing for me. It will be a multi-step disengagement.

Step 0 was to configure Facebook’s privacy settings, which I did a while ago. EFF provides some guidance.

Step 1: For many years, Facebook has had prominent visibility in my browser. I keep about a half-dozen tabs always open, including my email, calendar, RSS reader (Feedly), and some social media, including Facebook. I engage with each of those tabs multiple times an hour. Later this week, I’ll close Facebook’s tab. I’ll still visit Facebook for now, but more like once a day instead of several times an hour. This may not sound like a big change, but it is a different mindset for me.

In a few months, I’ll evaluate a Step 2 to stop cross-posting my social media content at Facebook. (I usually make identical posts to Mastodon, Bluesky, Facebook, and LinkedIn).

For now, Bluesky is my primary social media home. Find me there.

The post Facebooxit: I’m Dialing Down My Facebook Usage appeared first on Goldman's Observations.

I’m honored and a bit humbled to have served as Prof. Mark Lemley’s lead nominator to recognize his mentorship of other scholars. Nine other IP professors joined this nomination.

Prof. Lemley’s achievements as a scholar are legendary and likely well-known to many section members. Prof. Lemley operates at a scale that few other scholars can match. For example, his works have been cited 45,000 times, making him one of the ten most cited legal scholars of all time. I imagine many of you in the room have cited him yourself.

Prof. Lemley is also one of the most prolific legal scholars of all time. Many section members aspire to publish one article a year. Prof. Lemley produces more like 10X that. No one has been able to reverse engineer the secrets of his productivity. It’s prompted many “jokes” in our community (more precisely, a mix of admiration and envy) that Prof. Lemley must have clones or robots to achieve his astonishing level of productivity.

I mention the scale of Prof. Lemley’s scholarly output because that word—scale—also applies to his mentorship of other people’s scholarly work. His quantitative achievements as a scholarly mentor are at a scale that defies logic. I’ll mention three numerical measures of Prof. Lemley’s mentorship.

First measure: Prof. Lemley has helped over 50 former students and fellows become law professors plus many other non-students or fellows, including me. Prof. Lemley’s numbers reflect his impressive track record of spotting and nurturing future academics. Several of his nominators specifically mentioned how Prof. Lemley recognized their potential as students (sometimes before they even had considered an academic career), encouraged them to pursue academia, and successfully navigated them through the daunting process.

Second measure: Like many professors, Prof. Lemley generously comments on other people’s drafts. Unlike other professors, he provides feedback at a staggering scale. He has been mentioned twice as many times in law review articles’ star footnotes than the next closest person—an amazing 170 times.

Third measure: Prof. Lemley co-authors with other scholars a lot—over co-authored 150 papers. Prof. Lemley is such a frequent co-author that community members often joke about having a “Lemley Number” analogous to the Erdős Number. While some co-authors are established big names, Prof. Lemley routinely uses the co-authorship process as his way of mentoring and developing emerging scholars and boosting their credentials.

The scale of Prof. Lemley’s mentorship efforts is bigger than my brain can compute. It feels like no one can do that much mentoring; and surely someone so deeply invested in mentoring shouldn’t have enough time to be one of the community’s most prolific authors as well. Based solely on his individual efforts as a mentor, Prof. Lemley deserves section recognition.

However, Prof. Lemley’s true impact is better measured by the cumulative effects of his work. Prof. Lemley routinely motivates the people he benefits to “pay it forward” and help others like Prof. Lemley helped them. Prof. Lemley’s mentorship-at-scale acts like a force multiplier: his efforts inspire scholars to “pay it forward,” and their acts further inspire other community members to adopt that ethos. Collectively, it’s generated wonderful scholarly norms in Prof. Lemley’s communities, all modeled on Prof. Lemley’s mentorship.

Drafting these remarks, I kept thinking of the Archimedes principle, which says “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” I offer a Lemley corollary to this principle: with a generous mentor who dispenses guidance and kindness at scale, we can lift up entire scholarly communities.

For helping hundreds of individual mentees and for building great mentoring norms among scholarly communities, Prof. Lemley richly deserves recognition from this section. I extend to him my personal congratulations and my ongoing gratitude for his mentorship.

* * *

A few photos from the awards ceremony:

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Former Dean Don Polden and his successor, former dean Lisa Kloppenberg

I’m saddened by the death of my colleague, friend, and former supervisor, Prof. Donald (Don) Polden. Don was the dean that hired me as a tenure-track faculty at Santa Clara Law in 2006. I had been an adjunct instructor at SCU from 1997-2002, and returning to the law school was a dream of mine. Getting the offer from him was a highlight of my professional career.

At SCU, I was hired into a dual role as both a tenure-line faculty and Academic Director of the High Tech Law Institute. Normally, pre-tenure faculty are advised not to take mixed positions like this because of the risks to getting tenure:

• The administrative duties were likely to slow down my scholarly production, a key component of my tenure candidacy.
• Administrative decisions can be politically risky and can alienate colleagues. I hoped to be a mild version of myself during the tenure evaluation period, but I have a knack for finding trouble.
• I was coming into a new community with no built-up goodwill to smooth out any tenure considerations, unlike my situation at Marquette Law, where I felt confident of getting tenure the next year in part due to the goodwill I had built over my four years there.

To navigate this potentially perilous situation, I needed a dean who could help me succeed on every front–as a tenure candidate, a faculty member, an administrator, and also as a husband and father. Don did all of that and more. Foundationally, Don put together a teaching package that gave me enough time to invest in my HTLI responsibilities, perform my duties as a teacher and scholar, and still be a husband and father. As a result, I successfully navigated the tenure and full professor approvals during his deanship.

As my nominal boss, Don unequivocally backed the administrative choices I made. I always tried to be reasonable in my asks (of course, that’s a self-assessment…), but Don’s answer was always yes. His support led to a string of administrative successes that the school still benefits from, including a series of memorable conferences, the restructuring of Intellectual Property curriculum and High Tech Law Certificate (2009), and the launch of the Entrepreneurs’ Law Clinic (2013) (see this blog post for more background about Don’s role in the ELC’s founding).

One year, the HTLI unexpectedly dropped out of the top 10 of the US News specialty ranking of IP programs. I figured this development would make some alumni and students unhappy, so I asked Don if he would like me to tender my resignation from the HTLI director role so that he could use me as a scapegoat. Don’s facial reaction was a mix of bemusement and disbelief that I can only describe as a non-verbal statement “why would I as dean want to do that?” It was immediately clear to me that my resignation was the last thing on his mind. He saw the development as a short-term thing, not worth reacting to. His confidence in my administrative work was rewarded when the rankings drop was indeed only a one-year blip (I believe the program has ranked in the top 10 every year since).

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In addition to our successful professional relationship, Don was a personal friend. For example, Don had season tickets to SCU basketball and the Oakland A’s and occasionally shared extra tickets with me. I used those tickets to bring my kids to the games and create some great family memories. Don also connected us with his daughter Emma for childcare help, which was a godsend because my kids loved her. So, in addition to helping me structure my professional time so that I could be a husband and dad, Don played additional important background roles in my kids’ childhood, and I always will be grateful for that.

* * *

I owe a lot of my professional and personal success to Don. He was an inspiration, a catalyst, a champion, and a mensch. I offer my condolences to the Polden family on their loss.  ז״ל‎

More links:

• San Jose Mercury-News Obituary
• University announcement of his death
• 2006 interview with Don as the “new” Santa Clara Law dean

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