Josh Gerstein Bill Would Make National Security Council Subject to Foia Again Politico
Akhil Reed Amar is a famous law professor, working at Yale. He went to Yale College and also the law school — and became a professor there at 26. He is a Yale lifer, and very happy to be. He is in love with America, with American history, with the Constitution. Critics may call him a romantic. According to him, he sees clearly. He has written several books about the Constitution, including The Words That Made Us.
Earlier this month, Amar wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal called "The End of Roe v. Wade." In it, he explains why he, a pro-choice Democrat, believes that Roe is a bad decision — and why Justice Alito's leaked draft, overturning the decision, is correct.
Amar and I have done a leisurely, wide-ranging, and, I believe, very interesting podcast: here.
We begin with his name: "Akhil Reed Amar." An Indian first name, an English middle name, and an Indian last name. There must be stories behind that, and there are. Of his name, Amar says, "It's a reflection of my blended identity." His two brothers also have "Anglo" middle names, to go with their Indian first names and Indian last name.
Their parents grew up in India under the British Raj. (Their mother also did some of her growing up in Africa.) In India, they were trained as doctors. Independently, they went to the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, in the 1950s. There they met, at the medical school. Akhil was born in Ann Arbor on September 6, 1958.
And "the Constitution gives me the greatest birthday gift ever," says Amar, in the form of American citizenship. It's right there in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment. Like many Americans, though not all, Amar thinks he hit the jackpot, with this citizen business.
Akhil's father had a mentor at the U of M: Reed Nesbit, the chairman of the urology department. Akhil Reed Amar's middle name comes from this Dr. Nesbit. "We are a loyal family, a grateful family — grateful to America," says Amar. His father became a professor, at the University of California, San Francisco. Of course, Akhil himself became a professor.
"India, America, mentoring, gratitude — it's all there, in the name," he says.
He did most of his growing up in Walnut Creek, Calif., about 15 miles northeast of Oakland. In those days, he says, it was more rural than it is now. But even now "it's where the cosmopolitan culture of the San Francisco Bay Area meets the inland culture of the great Central Valley of California." He went to Las Lomas High School — and crossed the continent to Yale.
He arrived there, sight unseen, on his 18th birthday — September 6, 1976 ("a great year," he says, "our bicentennial year"). The first week, he met a brilliant senior, Richard Brookhiser, who has long been a jewel in the National Review crown. It was Amar who suggested the idea, and title, for Rick's book on Lincoln and the Founders: Founders' Son. A damn good book.
Young Amar's plan was to complete his studies, then go back to California. But, captivated by Yale, he stayed.
In college, he majored in economics. But while he was studying economics, he fell for history, hard — especially American history. So he wound up double-majoring. Two of his great American-history teachers were Edmund Morgan and John Morton Blum. At the law school, he studied with Charles Black, Bruce Ackerman, Owen Fiss, Guido Calabresi, Burke Marshall — "many great mentors," he says.
In our podcast, we address a variety of questions: the role of judges (versus that of legislators, for example); the size of the Supreme Court; life tenure; the litigiousness of Americans; political correctness, or wokeness, on campus.
Amar is a very old-fashioned professor, by the way. He does not want to create people in his own image and likeness. He wants to mentor everyone — left, right, or center — and help each person be the best he can be. The bullying of conservative students by Jacobinical types, he deplores.
At the end of our podcast, I ask him something like, "What do you wish people could know about the Constitution?" He makes three points.
It was epochal, the U.S. Constitution. People voted on it. Nothing like that had ever happened before. There had been very little democracy in the world. The Constitution was a big bang. You can speak of "B.C." and "A.D." — before the Constitution and after the document. "We Americans should be very proud of that," Amar says.
"We Americans"? Amar stresses that his forebears lived elsewhere. But so what? "I can affiliate with this project." So can anyone else. "It's open." Americanness is a matter of belief, not a matter of blood. The idea of America as a creedal nation seems badly out of fashion. But Amar does not mind being out of fashion. Besides, when you have tenure, you can — and should — say whatever the hell you want.
I am reminded of Mark Haidar — né Mahmoud Haidar — with whom I podcasted last year. He is a computer engineer and tech entrepreneur in Dallas. I met him at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, where he plays a role. Haidar grew up in Lebanon. One day, two employees of the United Nations showed up at his school. They brought two computers. This was "the day that changed my life," Mark told me.
Let me quote from a post I wrote:
He found something called "Encarta." This was an early Microsoft encyclopedia. He began reading about the United States and discovered the Declaration of Independence — which excited him. He knew, in his core, it was true: Human beings have rights that no man or system can negate.
Thereafter, he had a tradition. Every time he got a new notebook in school — like a spiral notebook — he would write in it the words "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Back to Akhil Reed Amar and the Constitution. A lot of people were fiercely opposed to the Constitution, he says, and voted against it. The country (such as it was) was badly polarized. But the losers accepted the outcome and kept working within the fledgling democracy. The winners listened to them. Soon came the Bill of Rights. Democracy involves give-and-take — and without it, says Amar, we're "doomed." (I, less polite, say "screwed.")
You might find this old-fashioned professor, and unapologetically old-fashioned American, refreshing. Again, our podcast is here.
Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/?splash
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