Legal Commentary

Since a good deal of attention on Judge Sotomayor has focused on her youthful and subsequent interest in "identity politics," and since some scorn has been cast on her helping to start a course at Princeton on the history and politics of Puerto RIco -- scorn that probably finds its reductio ad absurdam in the blog comments linked to here -- I thought it might be worthwhile to quote from a slightly different take on the nature of courses arising from identity politics.  It comes from an obituary of Ronald Takaki, who established a doctoral program on ethnicity at UC-Berkeley.  Here's the quote:

At U.C.L.A., Mr. Takaki taught the university?s first black-history course, created in response to the Watts riots. When a student asked what revolutionary tools he would be teaching, Mr. Takaki said: ?We?re going to strengthen our critical thinking and our writing skills. These can be revolutionary tools if we make them so.?