Customer Reviews

Poisoned Ivy: How Egos, Ideology, and Power Politics Almost Ruined Harvard Law School

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Poisoned Ivy starts with an unoriginal title and only gets worse. This was an interesting time in the history of Harvard Law, but Kerlow doesn't do justice to the competition of ideas and values that was going on but instead simply blames one side of the debate for all of the school's troubles. She pumps out all the old, predictable left-wing propaganda familiar to law students: lawyers in large firms are evil, conservatives are racist/sexist/homophobic, etc. This book is worth reading only if you agree with Kerlow's point of view and want to get really worked up over a relatively unimportant series of events.

Kerlow decides that it is incumbent upon her to shore up flagging left-liberal voices at HLS with a quick polemic. Since balance is too much to ask from her, those who want a fuller account should read a recent article in the Harvard Journal of Public Policy which deals with this episode.

Meanwhile, Kerlow should stick to fawning hagiographies or frenzied fulminations. She does both well.

This book has one redeeming factor, and only one: the moment you open her "book," two sentences in, you discover her perspective. "In the 1990's, it [Harvard Law School] has become a mockery of itself." Her basis for this contention, you demand? Well, I'm afraid you'll be dissapointed: there's very little. Synopsis: A famous African-American professor left the school because there weren't enough minorities and women, and there was a flap over a vile parody of a dead woman's work. Rather than condemn the indivudals invlolved, the "lawyer-journalist," true to her sensationalist instincts, leaps at the opportunity to condemn the institution. As a current first-year student there, that book horrifies me with the facts, but those facts were easily acessable elsewhere. Her unique bias is reflected from that second sentence to the final "Harvard Law School will never recapture its glory unless it makes that connection." From two scenarios that could be viewed as discrimation -- or could be cast in a more innocent, albeit foolish and politically incorrect, light -- she leaps at the opportunity to condemn Harvard Law School for some imagined slight. If you want to read a book that harshly portrays HLS, there's quite a lot out there. You don't need to read this pop-paranoia.

Frankly, not a well written book. Her dislike of anyone who does not toe the Marxist line is blatant. The people she admires come off as coddeled and easily offended whiners. Unless you have a lot of time to waste, don't read it.

This book, no diatribe, shows us what can happen when someone with some sort of vendetta has the outlet to espouse their views. The book seems to be centered around the controversial Harvard Law Review "Gag" Issue that mocked the slain wife of a Harvard Professor. The book over dramatizes the situation and then the author adds her own critique of the school. The plight of minority professors is chronicled with a very one-sided view. The book should only be read with the understanding that it is not very objective and really not very interesting

Far too subjective - full of judgmental adjectives...its overwrought moral tone will have you rooting for the administration to tell the protestors to get back to class...