By Thomas J. Bourgeois
We interrupt our regularly scheduled bimonthly chronicles of classmates’ comings, goings, milestones, gatherings, publications, projects, pilgrimages, and other assorted ventures to bring you an important—nay, urgent!—message from reunion chair Javade “JC” Chaudhri. So listen up, campers:
“The dates of our 45th reunion have been confirmed as May 28–31, 2020, the weekend after Memorial Day (headquarters TBA). Please mark your calendars and call your roommates and friends! Meanwhile, we have commenced the planning process for programs, activities, music, and fun. I have conscripted some classmates to help organize reunion activities, and more of you will be hearing from me. Anybody who wishes to volunteer, please contact me at Javade.Chaudhri@gmail.com. Ideas for programs, panels, and entertainment are most welcome so we can integrate them into the overall YAA template. With the upcoming election season, the spring and summer of 2020 will be an exciting time for the future of the nation and the world. We plan to have some great panels on politics, climate, and a lot more. Mostly fun, though, so plan on attending.”
Thanks, JC, and we look forward to hearing more from you in the coming months. Nancy Young and I also encourage you to lend a hand if you can. Please especially consider volunteering for phone outreach, as we’d like to make sure that every classmate gets a personal invitation.
Now it’s back to the usual order of business, and there’s not a lot to report this go-round. Is it possible people are saving their best stories to share at our 45th? Hmm . . .
Theatrical producer extraordinaire Catherine Schreiber checks in with this news: “Thrilled to say the newly imagined Stephen Sondheim Company (with a female Bobbie and a gay couple) won four Oliviers at the 2019 awards, including Best New Musical. Excited also that the Elliott & Harper/Catherine Schreiber production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will be performed at the Bridge, London, in November, directed by Sally Cookson. Also, The King’s Speech will have its American debut in Chicago in September and then tour. The Susan Stroman–directed The Scottsboro Boys, which I produced in London, will be coming back to the US in 2021 and will play in Decatur, Alabama, where the majority of the trials took place. And last, producing a documentary in London about how theater changes lives. So important at this time! Would love to see you all at the shows. Come join me!”
Lawyer, judicial scholar and writer, Cato Institute Fellow, and notable public intellectual Walter Olson posted this July 1 dispatch on the Class of 1975 Facebook page: “My blog, Overlawyered, often named as the oldest law blog, reaches 20 years of continuous publication today. It takes a lot of work, but helps keep me connected to a congenial community of commentators and academics. I’ve noticed that when I meet someone over, say, 60, who knows of my work, it’s often through my books, while those somewhat younger will think first of the blog. People under 30 who know of me seem to think of me as a Twitter personality or maybe podcast guest and will often be unaware that I have written anything in longer formats. It’s going to end there, because I refuse to learn Snapchat.” Walter’s blog is subtitled Chronicling the High Cost of Our Legal System. His books include Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and Overlawyered America (2011); The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America’s Rule of Law (2003); and The Excuse Factory: How Employment Law is Paralyzing the American Workplace (1997). Read his 20th anniversary blogpost. Hats off, Walter, for your enduring public engagement and—as evidenced by the Snapchat remark—your clear sense of boundaries!
John Geanakoplos received the Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences. A member of Yale’s faculty since 1980, John is Tobin Professor of Economics. He was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1990. In 1999, John was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “Professor Geanakoplos,” wrote one of his students, “truly holds himself to the highest standards, connecting his lessons to actionable, real-world insights, ensuring mathematical rigor, and going above and beyond to help every student understand the material.”
As always, I invite your news, and I end by invoking this threat, handed down to me by my esteemed predecessor Arthur Greenwald: if you don’t write me about what’s happening in your life, I might have to make stuff up about you.