In a recent First Monday Musings column on Above the Law, Dean Amar shared his perspective on why legal academics should indeed engage with the media, and how they can ensure quality outcomes from those conversations.
He wrote:
"My personal observation is that in my own career I think I have benefitted tremendously from connecting with print and electronic media (both nationally and locally), from regularly running op-eds in broadly distributed newspapers, and from writing my biweekly online column (mostly on constitutional matters) — first for findlaw.com and now for justia.com — for almost two decades. One concern people raise is whether such activities are a distraction from the research and teaching that are the primary professional responsibilities of a law professor. For me, just the opposite. Quite often, I use shorter, lay-friendly essays and media interviews to explain ideas I have already developed in more depth in academic literature or, more exciting still, to begin to explore the contours of ideas that I have been thinking about and that I plan on examining in more depth in future scholarly work. And I often use (and assign) my essays (or interview segments) in my classroom teaching, helping students appreciate and evaluate the application of legal theories to important topics drawn from the headlines."
Full column on Above the Law.