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So, just a few weeks ago I read an article about the Bohemian Club (or Bohemian Grove) in Vanity Fair. The article is really about some logging issues on land owned by the club in northern California, but before I read it I didn't realize there was a secret society of "America's richest, most conservative men," who gathered in nature to do whatever secret societies do. The fact that some of the named persons were politicians, even Presidents, made it seem even weirder. (There's apparently a lot of controversy over this VF article, so feel free to Google if you're interested.)

But now we hear that Sonia Sontomayor is a member of the competing tribe, the Belizean Club, elsewhere called Belizean Grove, formed in response to the Bohemian Club. First and foremost, her membership should not make a difference. If George H.W. Bush was a member of the Bohemian Club and gets to be president, then being in the Bohemian Club or the Belizean Club shouldn't keep anyone off the Supreme Court, right? Let's just get that out of the way. Yes, judges must comply with the Code of Judicial Conduct, but let's just set this aside for awhile.

More importantly (to me), the unsettling, annoying elephant in my office right now is telling me that I am being inconsistent in thinking that the Bohemian Club sounds all weird and Lord of the Flies but that the Belizean Club sounds like fun. (Here's more info on the Belizean Grove here and here.) (And where's my invite?) How can I simultaneously think that powerful men getting together if faintly sinister and oppressive, but a well-educated Ladies' Night Out group is pretty fun? I have an "LNO" group. In Milwaukee, I was in an (all-female) Bunco group, and in Houston, I was in an (all-female) book group. I'm not a sexist person. I'm a "girls just wanna have fun" person. But if someone told me he was in an all-male business roundtable group, I would be appalled. (In fact, I have, and I am.) Is it the business/power element? Do I think that the Bohemian Club is secretly controlling the U.S. economy but that the Belizean Club (which seems to have some business executives and other high-powered members, but probably not the eye-catching lineup of the household names in the Bohemian Club membership) is just having spa vacations? Or is it the fact that if white guys get together (I know, Bohemian Club is not all-white, just bear with me) and join forces there's bad stuff there, but if a group of females, or a group of [insert ethnicity here] male professionals or [insert ethnicity here] female professionals get together then it is much needed networking, mentoring and support? How can these opinions co-exist?

I bring this up because I think this is an undercurrent of the Sotomayor nomination. Sotomayor is a Puerto Rican female judge in a time and place when most judges aren't female, and most judges aren't nonwhite. So, she is invited to join groups, attend conferences, be on panels, and write articles based on the fact that she is a nonwhite female judge. So, she gets asked questions like "What is it like to be a Puerto Rican judge?" "What is it like to be a female judge" And she has to answer these questions, and no matter how she answers them, somebody isn't going to like what she says. My old friend Todd Zywicki has a good post on Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment, a comment that everyone has to comment on these days. Including me.

No one ever invited David Souter to be on a panel of what it's like to be a judge from New Hampshire, or if they did no one read the transcript from that panel. So, there's a lot of fodder there for Sotomayor that isn't there for others. She's also been in the public sphere during times in which these issues have been discussed a lot -- diversity, affirmative action, critical race theory. When Sandra Day O'Connor went to college and law school, before Sotomayor was born, she wasn't asked to be on committees to recruit women faculty or increase diversity. Those didn't exist. She just couldn't get a job when she graduated. Sotomayor had a very different experience -- one in which gender and ethnicity issues were the topics of the day, with no way to avoid forming a perspective.

I can't even tell you how many panels I've been on about being a female attorney or a female academic or how I strike a work/family balance. I'm always happy to speak at these panels, and I hope someday I don't have to answer what I've said there. I'm sure I've said something to the effect that motherhood makes me a good academic because I have to be disciplined and set deadlines for myself or something like that. I hope I'm not being breeder-centric and offending anyone there! And I know that my colleagues of color are invited to a whole different set of conferences and panels, and I hope they are never called to the carpet for trying to be role models, trying to network, trying to mentor.

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So, just a few weeks ago I read an article about the Bohemian Club (or Bohemian Grove) in Vanity Fair. The article is really about some logging issues on land owned by the club in northern California, but before I read it I didn't realize there was a secret society of "America's richest, most conservative men," who gathered in nature to do whatever secret societies do. The fact that some of the named persons were politicians, even Presidents, made it seem even weirder. (There's apparently a lot of controversy over this VF article, so feel free to Google if you're interested.)

But now we hear that Sonia Sontomayor is a member of the competing tribe, the Belizean Club, elsewhere called Belizean Grove, formed in response to the Bohemian Club. First and foremost, her membership should not make a difference. If George H.W. Bush was a member of the Bohemian Club and gets to be president, then being in the Bohemian Club or the Belizean Club shouldn't keep anyone off the Supreme Court, right? Let's just get that out of the way. Yes, judges must comply with the Code of Judicial Conduct, but let's just set this aside for awhile.

More importantly (to me), the unsettling, annoying elephant in my office right now is telling me that I am being inconsistent in thinking that the Bohemian Club sounds all weird and Lord of the Flies but that the Belizean Club sounds like fun. (Here's more info on the Belizean Grove here and here.) (And where's my invite?) How can I simultaneously think that powerful men getting together if faintly sinister and oppressive, but a well-educated Ladies' Night Out group is pretty fun? I have an "LNO" group. In Milwaukee, I was in an (all-female) Bunco group, and in Houston, I was in an (all-female) book group. I'm not a sexist person. I'm a "girls just wanna have fun" person. But if someone told me he was in an all-male business roundtable group, I would be appalled. (In fact, I have, and I am.) Is it the business/power element? Do I think that the Bohemian Club is secretly controlling the U.S. economy but that the Belizean Club (which seems to have some business executives and other high-powered members, but probably not the eye-catching lineup of the household names in the Bohemian Club membership) is just having spa vacations? Or is it the fact that if white guys get together (I know, Bohemian Club is not all-white, just bear with me) and join forces there's bad stuff there, but if a group of females, or a group of [insert ethnicity here] male professionals or [insert ethnicity here] female professionals get together then it is much needed networking, mentoring and support? How can these opinions co-exist?

I bring this up because I think this is an undercurrent of the Sotomayor nomination. Sotomayor is a Puerto Rican female judge in a time and place when most judges aren't female, and most judges aren't nonwhite. So, she is invited to join groups, attend conferences, be on panels, and write articles based on the fact that she is a nonwhite female judge. So, she gets asked questions like "What is it like to be a Puerto Rican judge?" "What is it like to be a female judge" And she has to answer these questions, and no matter how she answers them, somebody isn't going to like what she says. My old friend Todd Zywicki has a good post on Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment, a comment that everyone has to comment on these days. Including me.

No one ever invited David Souter to be on a panel of what it's like to be a judge from New Hampshire, or if they did no one read the transcript from that panel. So, there's a lot of fodder there for Sotomayor that isn't there for others. She's also been in the public sphere during times in which these issues have been discussed a lot -- diversity, affirmative action, critical race theory. When Sandra Day O'Connor went to college and law school, before Sotomayor was born, she wasn't asked to be on committees to recruit women faculty or increase diversity. Those didn't exist. She just couldn't get a job when she graduated. Sotomayor had a very different experience -- one in which gender and ethnicity issues were the topics of the day, with no way to avoid forming a perspective.

I can't even tell you how many panels I've been on about being a female attorney or a female academic or how I strike a work/family balance. I'm always happy to speak at these panels, and I hope someday I don't have to answer what I've said there. I'm sure I've said something to the effect that motherhood makes me a good academic because I have to be disciplined and set deadlines for myself or something like that. I hope I'm not being breeder-centric and offending anyone there! And I know that my colleagues of color are invited to a whole different set of conferences and panels, and I hope they are never called to the carpet for trying to be role models, trying to network, trying to mentor.

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