LEARNING THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM FROM LAURIE (KT ALBISTON)

Young scholars, especially first-generation students, people who identify as women and/or LGBTQ+, and people of color, learn early that there is a “hidden curriculum” to navigating academia (see, e.g., Reference CalarcoCalarco, 2020; Reference MargolisMargolis, 2001). The hidden curriculum can be understood as the “habitus” of academia, the rules and norms that are not formally taught or explicitly conveyed that nevertheless constitute the cultural capital that enables success (Reference BourdieuBourdieu, 1977, Reference Bourdieu1987). This hidden curriculum of unwritten rules, unspoken expectations, and unofficial norms, behaviors, and values defines what it means to be an academic. Scholars who learn these implicit academic, social, and cultural messages, who learn to walk the walk and talk the talk, tend to transition successfully from graduate student to assistant professor, and from assistant professor to tenure. Knowing that the hidden curriculum exists, however, is not the same as knowing how to master its invisible rules and norms. Laurie taught those around her important unwritten norms and rules that govern academia, including how to behave like a scholar, how to recognize and produce good scholarship, and how to do your part for the community.

WALKING WITH LAURIE (OSAGIE OBASOGIE)

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, I started going on long walks. Everything was closed, and social distancing was still the norm. So, I started walking. I would just wander around the Berkeley Hills hours at a time.

Laurie and I have been neighbors for several years. I can see Laurie's house from my kitchen window. Before the pandemic, we would occasionally run into each other, but most of our interactions back then were on campus. She was a dear advisor to me as a graduate student and early career scholar. And I am quite thankful for the two years that I had with her as a colleague at Berkeley Law and the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program. Laurie was a phenomenal scholar. Her contributions will be treasured for years to come. She has influenced my work tremendously, and her guidance over the years is the foundation of the sociological imagination that I bring to everything that I do. And I'm sure this is also true for many, many others.

As I ventured out into the world on these long walks, I started to see more of Laurie—and in a different context. Laurie has done so much for me over the years. She guided me while I completed my dissertation, protected me when obstacles appeared, and created opportunities that launched my career. But perhaps what I will cherish the most about Laurie are the long conversations that we would have on the sidewalk, sometimes with other neighbors, and always with her dog by her side. We talked about everything—life, politics, and the various comings and goings in the neighborhood. I always left these spontaneous meetings thinking about the world a little differently. Laurie was an incredible mentor. And an even better friend.

Laurie loved dogs. She would often ask me “When are you going to get a dog?” I would always find different ways to dodge the question. I like dogs, but never feel like I have the time it takes to be a good dog owner. I think Laurie was persistent in asking me about this because she understood the importance of having a full life, of doing more than just work, and of giving to, caring for, and nurturing someone or something beyond your own needs. She was most certainly right.

Laurie gave much of her life and attention to dogs, most recently to her little companion Juno. Juno and I did not start off on the best of terms. Juno would see me from afar as I walked toward her and Laurie and would bark up a storm. Laurie would patiently hold her back with a leash. We tried everything to get Juno to like me. I tried bribing her with treats, but she would just take the treat and then continue barking at me. Laurie would tell Juno, “That's my friend Osagie.” That did not seem to matter much to Juno. Walk after walk, this routine persisted. It seemed like my relationship with Juno would never blossom.

One day, during one of the last times that I saw Laurie while out on a walk, we struck up our normal conversation. After about 15 min or so, I turned to Laurie and said, “Hey, have you noticed that Juno hasn't barked at me?” Laurie looked down at Juno and then to me and said, “Wow, you're right! Maybe now she's your friend!” Laurie's tedious and careful efforts at doggie dispute resolution had paid off, and Juno finally accepted me. And as I looked down at the fluffy little pup that had spent most of the pandemic growling at me, I think she may have even looked up and smiled. Well, as much as a dog can do that.

I still go on long walks. Each time, a big part of me hopes that I might run into Laurie and Juno. And, I still look out of my kitchen window, hoping to catch a glimpse of them. It is hard to accept, but I understand that Laurie is no longer with us, and that Juno is living her best life in Wisconsin with Laurie's sister. But I am comforted by the love, joy, and wisdom that Laurie brought to my life. She will always be with me, by my side, as I walk through the Berkeley Hills, and for the rest of my life. Laurie, you are loved, and you are missed. Thank you for all that you have done.

LEARNING RESEARCH COLLABORATION FROM LAURIE (CAL MORRILL)

Much of Laurie's pathbreaking scholarship emerged from collaborative efforts with teams of researchers she led or co-led on ambitious empirical projects. I once heard her tell a graduate student that to succeed in academia they needed to establish a singular scholarly identity early in their career, but to sustain that identity they would need to collaborate with scholars they cared about and respected. “Why collaboration?” the student asked. Laurie responded that collaboration can open your mind to new ideas and expertise, and besides, she said with her wonderful smile, it is more fun to work on research with people you care about and respect. True enough. As with all things Laurie, however, there was deeper reflection and method in her team-based research collaborations than only expanding one's expertise or having fun (although there was always plenty of fun). What did I learn from Laurie about how to succeed at team-based research collaborations? How did the practices she instilled in her team-based research collaborations underscore her core values?

Laurie typically approached research collaborations with theoretically-informed, working research questions and a capacious sense of the object of inquiry (e.g., “judicial deference” or “rights mobilization”). In some projects, such as Conversations in Law and Society, the object of inquiry only emerged gradually as we began coding the public oral histories in the project and realized we were studying the transformation of law and society from an intellectual movement to a field that never quite became institutionalized. However well-defined the object of inquiry was, Laurie always raised important reflexive questions all the way through a collaborative project from initial team meetings to analyses to write-ups: “What do we mean by rights mobilization?” or “How can we measure rights mobilization in a way that closely aligns with how we conceptualized it?” or “What are we trying to learn from founding scholars in law and society?” She believed that answering such questions involved a lot of thought and discussion, but even more so getting into the thick of conducting the research itself through collecting and analyzing data, and writing up findings. Laurie never signaled she had all the answers to the questions she or others raised, while listening—Laurie was an excellent listener—and welcoming ideas from anyone on or outside the team if their expertise might shed light on a knotty issue. In this sense, collaborating with Laurie constituted learning-by-doing, a hands-on, iterative approach for solving conceptual puzzles, meeting methodological challenges, and making sense of research findings. Learning-by-doing could be a bit messy, yet its value-added character far outweighed its potential pitfalls by creating opportunities for innovation, alternative expertise, and relational connection while reducing hierarchy among team members (especially important when working with persons of very different statuses, such as students or entry-level faculty). Although Laurie always exercised wise leadership on her projects, learning-by-doing meant that project leadership could emerge from multiple places on a research team depending upon what was needed. Team members felt empowered to intervene with their insights without fear of looking stupid. In this sense, learning-by-doing realized multiple values Laurie held dear, especially equality, humility, solidarity, curiosity, and fun.

The fluid style of learning-by-doing could not have succeeded without two other practices: analytic tenacity and substantive governance. Analytic tenacity involved the persistent, systematic pursuit of meaningful analyses and interpretations of empirical data. Many research collaborators' memories of working with Laurie may resonate with this practice. On any project, Laurie relentlessly pushed for precision and what the research findings meant for broader theoretical and legal discourse. If conducting quantitative research, there was always one more model to run, one more technique to try to ensure that a statistically significant finding was actually, as Laurie put it, “real.” If conducting qualitative work, she tirelessly pushed collaborators and herself to clearly articulate the basis for interpretive claims in interview transcripts and fieldnotes while not “cherry picking” examples simply because they aligned with one's theory. Analytic tenacity realized multiple values by which Laurie lived her professional life, including authenticity, clarity, elegance, and a fierce commitment to theoretical significance and methodological rigor.

Substantive governance proved especially salient in the School Rights Project (SRP) as it became a sprawling research team comprising multiple faculty and more than two dozen graduate and undergraduate students spread across four different universities. This practice involved structuring researcher authority inside the project via formal, transparent policies that curbed arbitrariness while achieving fairness. At Laurie's insistence, the principal investigators on the SRP—Richard Arum (then Professor of Sociology and Education at New York University and now Professor of Education and Sociology at UC Irvine), Karolyn Tyson (then Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and now Professor and Chair of Sociology at Georgetown University), and Cal (then Professor of Sociology, Business, and Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine and now Stefan A. Riesenfeld Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley)—agreed to a series of written procedures for credit claiming (e.g., author orderings) and sharing data and data instruments among team members and beyond. Substantive governance helped manage power relations within the project while providing a normative structure to undergird learning-by-doing and analytic tenacity, prevent misunderstandings, and offer a mechanism for resolving disputes. In this sense, substantive governance realized and symbolized several other values Laurie cherished, including fairness, trust, and accountability.

I once asked Laurie if she drew some of her inspiration for how to approach team-based research collaboration from her experiences while a teenager playing in the State of Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra (WYSO). As first-chair violin, she also filled the role of the WSYO's “concert mistress” to tune the orchestra before concerts and work closely with the conductor. She said that working on research teams reminded her a little of playing in a symphony orchestra, except that in the latter “the music is always there” to “script” performances while the conductor keeps everyone on point. Research projects, she observed, often prove more “open-ended” by taking unanticipated turns, which require improvisation. Learning-by-doing, analytic tenacity, and substantive governance helped Laurie tune, improvise, and metaphorically write the music in her many collaborative projects that yielded beautiful, impactful scholarship. Although she did not use the terms suggested in this essay to describe her approach to collaboration, she would recognize the practices (and, knowing her, would have had a useful suggestion or two for alternative concepts and arguments). Of course, these practices did not guarantee the considerable payoffs her collaborative projects produced. But they helped extend the magic Laurie always brought to research in the form of insight and creativity, and that those of us fortunate enough to collaborate with her witnessed firsthand.

CONCLUSION

Learning from Laurie Edelman was always multifaceted and impactful whether in her roles as mentor or research collaborator. The lessons she taught explicitly unfolded in her countless meetings and emails with students and faculty colleagues. Yet, learning from Laurie perhaps most powerfully occurred by watching her in action, such as how she asked a scholarly question, how she supported students or, perhaps most subtly of all, how she demonstrated human connection and kindness through the way she introduced the dogs who lived with her to friends she encountered on daily walks in her neighborhood. In this sense, what we learned from Laurie as a mentee or research collaborator taught each of us how to conduct our lives with the highest integrity and honor; to approach what Laurie achieved as that rarest of human beings, a true mensche.