New York University School of Law is identified in The Bob Zadek Show as the academic affiliation of two guests and as the host’s own alma mater. Bob Zadek describes it as his alma mater in two separate episodes, and in each case the reference accompanies the introduction of a law professor guest. The school is not itself the subject of any episode in the excerpts; it enters the program through the credentials of the people Zadek interviews.
Richard Epstein
In an episode on sexual harassment, Zadek introduces Richard Epstein as a law professor at New York University School of Law. Zadek also notes that Epstein writes and participates in a blog called Defining Ideas, and that he is associated with the Hoover Institution and with the University of Chicago An Intellectual Discussion of Sexual Harassment with Richard Epstein (2018).
The episode’s discussion ranges across market retribution, reputation and defamation law. Zadek frames the Harvey Weinstein case as an instance in which the market, rather than litigation or government action, produced the consequences: the Weinstein Company failed and Miramax went into financial difficulty, none of it, in Zadek’s account, the result of litigation or governmental action. Zadek asks whether the marketplace was more effective than litigation or government would have been at punishing the wrongdoer, though without the due process of a courtroom.
Epstein responds that a corporation’s most valuable asset is its reputation and the confidence it has with the public in the market, and that once the Weinstein allegations became clear the reaction was relentless. He cautions that reputation can be fickle and can be used against people whose charges are much less clear, producing injustice. He contrasts Weinstein with Garrison Keillor, whose show was taken off the air by Minnesota Public Radio, saying that what Weinstein did bore no relation to what was said that Keillor did. Epstein argues for some mode by which people falsely charged can exonerate themselves, and says that a sense of proportionality tying punishment to the severity of the offense tends to get lost in reputational situations.
Epstein draws on his earlier writing about products liability law to argue that litigation over known bad products was slow and weak, while reputational losses killed companies. He cites Bon Vivant, a company that made vichyssoise and was out of business within a week after a contaminated load killed a dozen people or so, and a caterer who lost her business after a death from food poisoning that was later traced to the host’s day-old salad. He also cites airline accidents, where liability of $100 or $200 million is dwarfed by stock losses twenty times that size because future business is anticipated to go elsewhere. In sexual harassment cases, he says, much is covert and private, so the truth of allegations in some cases becomes unquestioned.
On defamation, Epstein says the remedy is about as useless as one could imagine today, because recovery rules for public figures are very narrow. He describes the doctrine of mitior sensus, or innocent construction, under which a charge that can be read however fancifully as non-defamatory is given the innocent meaning, and the New York Times rule requiring actual malice—knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of truth. He cites the makers of Alar, falsely accused in a well-publicized story, whose product was put out of business long before the defamation suit was brought, and whose suits failed. He says there has not been an important defamation case since about 1990 or 1991, whereas before that time there were many, mainly in federal court, and they were causes célèbres.
Zadek’s framing of the regulatory landscape distinguishes Title VII, which he says deals with employment discrimination, from Title IX, which he says deals with college campuses, and he notes the role of the Office of Civil Rights. He observes that sexual harassment as boorish behavior is not per se actionable under federal law, and that attention concentrates on the workplace and college campuses, both once male-dominated institutions.
Rachel Barkow
In an episode on criminal justice, Zadek introduces Rachel Elise Barkow as the Segal Family Professor of Regulatory Law and Policy and the faculty director of the Center for Administration of Criminal Justice at New York University School of Law, which he again calls his alma mater. He also identifies her as a member of the United States Sentencing Commission and a member of the Manhattan DA’s Conviction Integrity Policy Advisory Panel, and notes that she clerked for Justice Scalia and Judge Larry Silberman of the DC Circuit. He mentions her book Prisoners of Politics Rachel Barkow on Fixing the Fundamentals of Criminal Justice (2019).
Barkow opens by correcting the record on one point: she says she is no longer on the Sentencing Commission, making that clear so she can speak freely about it. Zadek acknowledges the clarification.
Zadek’s introduction frames the episode’s subject: he says government’s most sacred role is protecting liberty, persons and property, and that the criminal justice system is the tool for doing so; taking away someone’s liberty is a very big deal, and government acting in the people’s name to put someone in a cage or deprive them of life cannot be taken lightly. He says government is not doing that great, and that many believe there is a plague of mass incarceration—too many people in prison for too long, for the wrong reasons, with a system that is counterproductive. The excerpt’s episode description states that Barkow joins Zadek to analyze why the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world despite stable crime rates, and that they explore how political dysfunction and tough-on-crime rhetoric have replaced empirical evidence in sentencing and pre-trial detention, and discuss emerging reforms in plea bargaining and bail.
Across episodes
New York University School of Law appears in three episodes across four years, always in the same role: as the institutional affiliation named in Zadek’s introduction of a guest, or as Zadek’s own alma mater. In the 2018 episode Richard Epstein is introduced as a law professor there; in the 2019 episode Rachel Barkow is introduced with her endowed professorship and center directorship there; in the 2022 episode Epstein is again introduced as teaching law there. The excerpts show no development in how the school is treated—it is a credential, not a topic—and no guest discusses the school itself.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the school’s founding, history, curriculum, faculty apart from the two named guests, or any institutional position it has taken. They do not state where the school is located, nor do they report any ranking, enrollment or program. Nothing in the excerpts indicates that any episode of the show took the law school itself as its subject.