Lest you believe the flap over the recent prohibition on law professor Rob Steinbuch’s long-approved use of guest lecturers during absences on Jewish high holidays has passed, think again.
I say that because a committee at the UALR Bowen Law School recently voted to recommend eliminating the school’s guest lecturer policy to the full Bowen faculty, keeping the issue alive.
For years, policy has allowed guest lecturers to cover Bowen classes when faculty members were legitimately absent (as on religious holidays).
Steinbuch said the action by four fellow professors on the committee was “clearly personal and aimed at my particular situation during the Jewish holidays when for nearly 20 years I have invited legal professionals and judges to educate classes about our practice in the real world.”
A decorated law professor and the state’s leading Freedom of Information Act expert, who also is seeking election to the House of Representatives for District 73 in Little Rock, Steinbuch may be on to something, considering the school’s visiting-lecturer policy wasn’t an issue until challenged by Bowen Dean Theresa Beiner last year. That’s after Steinbuch had invited a federal judge to lecture his class during his religious-observance absence, as he had done many times before.