University of Texas Law Professor Brian Leiter posts this excellent summary analysis of Houston’s Rice University, in which he notes Rice’s relative excellence in comparison to its even greater potential. Based on Professor Leiter’s insight, new Rice president David Leebron would be smart to retain him as a consultant.
My late father, who was an esteemed professor of medicine for years at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston’s famed Texas Medical Center, thought that Rice — which is located adjacent to the Medical Center — had always underdeveloped the research opportunities and resources that the Rice faculty could tap within the Medical Center. He observed that Rice’s failure to seize this opportunity allowed the University of Texas to step into the breach in the late 1960’s and establish the second research institution (to Baylor College of Medicine) in the Medical Center. Even with UT’s success in the Medical Center (particularly with the phenomenal M.D. Anderson Cancer Center), the Medical Center has now grown to such an extent that Rice could harvest much greater research opportunities there and become as integral a force in Medical Center research as UT and Baylor.