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2.14_AALS Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project
17 Plays4 years ago
Co-Dean Kim Mutcherson sits down with the creators of the AALS Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project discuss the project's inception, what it takes to create an antiracist learning institution, and the legacy each Dean hopes to achieve through their extraordinarily necessary work.
The Co-Creators of the AALS Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project are:
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University School of Law
Kim Mutcherson, Rutgers Law School
Carla D. Pratt, Washburn University School of Law
Danielle Holley-Walker, Howard University School of Law
Danielle M. Conway, Penn State Dickinson Law
Learn more about the AALS Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project.
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally-known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Series Producer and Editor: Kate Bianco
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rutgerslaw/messageRecommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Anti-Racist Clearing House
00:00:08
Speaker
Hi, my name is Kim Mettreson, co-dean of Rutgers Law School in Camden, and this is the power of attorney.
00:00:16
Speaker
Now I obviously think that every show that we do is a special show in its own way, but this one in particular is very special because this one, one we have more guests than we've ever had before. But more importantly, those guests are all law school deans who are the founders, the co-founders of the law deans anti-racist clearing house, which is something that we will talk
00:00:41
Speaker
They all also happen to be absolutely fascinating, brilliant women who it's been a pleasure to work with. So I'm so excited that they're all here today and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. So what I'm going to do instead of introducing all of them myself is I am just going to ask each of them to say their name and what school they are currently in charge of.
Deans' Introductions and Institutional Histories
00:01:06
Speaker
Well, hello, I am Danielle Conway, and I'm the very proud Dean of Penn State Dickinson Law, the law school that started in 1834. Hi, I'm Danielle Holly Walker, and I'm thrilled to be here with you, Kim, today. I am the Dean of Howard University School of Law, founded in 1869.
00:01:29
Speaker
Hi, I'm Angela Nwachi Willig. I am the very proud Dean of Boston University School of Law founded in 1872 by abolitionists who at the time founded a school that did not discriminate on the basis of gender, religion, or race. Hi, I'm Carla Pratt and I am Dean at Washburn University School of Law. Washburn University was also founded after the Civil War to celebrate the end of slavery.
00:01:57
Speaker
and to educate all people, including the recently freed slaves and women. And the law school was founded after the university in 1903. Perfect.
00:02:07
Speaker
So the way that we always start this podcast is with me asking our guests about their origin story.
Carla Pratt's Journey from Medicine to Law
00:02:15
Speaker
And that was particularly appropriate for this podcast because I always think of origin stories as words that we understand how superheroes get created. And I certainly think of all of you as superheroes in your own way.
00:02:28
Speaker
So let's get some origin stories. I actually would love to start with you, Carla. I remember you at the, I guess it was the 2019 Black Pre-Law Conference where you were talking about your upbringing, which I thought was just an absolutely fascinating and sort of wrenching story as well. So would you mind talking a little bit about, you know, where you come from and how you got to the point where you decided you wanted to be a lawyer?
00:02:56
Speaker
Sure. So I grew up on a farm in rural Oklahoma. My father was the grandson of a slave who had been owned by a Choctaw Indian man. My father was hired out to work for white people on their farms starting at the age of 10. And so he didn't get to attend school and he did not learn to read and write.
00:03:22
Speaker
And so he really emphasized education from me as the tool to self-fulfillment and becoming financially free, right? As a way of moving out of poverty. And so I knew I wanted to pursue higher education and I initially thought that I might go to medical school because when you grow up on a small farm in a small place in Oklahoma, especially as a girl.
00:03:49
Speaker
you know of about five professions. And so I knew doctor lawyer, school teacher, secretary and farmer. And so in my mind, I had to choose one of those. And initially I thought I was going to medical school. And so I
00:04:03
Speaker
worked in a hospital my senior year of high school and quickly learned that I did not like touching everyone. And that was in 1985 when there were no latex gloves or masks or anything, but I quickly segued into law instead of medicine and had the privilege of attending Howard University School of Law after completing college where I fell in love with the study of law and hence wanted to become an academic and
00:04:33
Speaker
joined Penn State in 2000 on the 10th track and subsequently moved to Washburn to service dean here. And I have enjoyed being a lawyer and our profession. Certainly we have our challenges, but I think our profession has great power in terms of our democracy and in terms of the opportunity for creating greater equity for everyone in our society.
00:05:00
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Andrea, can you go next?
Angela Nwachi Willig's Path in Legal Education
00:05:05
Speaker
Sure. I'm happy to. My origin story in law sort of begins with high school. I didn't decide to go to law school until I was in college. I went to a high school in Houston, Texas.
00:05:15
Speaker
And it was a really racially, ethnically, a socio-economically diverse, diverse in a wide variety of ways. And it was a tracking system. And of course, tracking meant that the school was re-segregated on the inside. And so one of my social studies teachers, sort of our world geography honors teacher was an African-American woman. And I was myself and another African-American woman in that class. And she knew a lawyer in her church who had his own firm and she was
00:05:45
Speaker
wanted to help the two of us, and so she asked him if he would hire us, knew that he would mentor African American students, and he would hire us over the summer to work in his law firm. He was an African American man who was the first associate at one of the major law firms in Houston, I believe it was Fulbright and Jaworski, and then he opened up his own law firm and he did municipal finance law.
00:06:10
Speaker
And so he hired us both to work as interns when we were in high school after the summer of our sophomore year. But I remember leaving that and thinking I didn't want to be a lawyer, but I think that wasn't an important experience because I think when I thought about wanting to be a lawyer, it let me know that I could be because I'd met him and through that exposure knew that I could become a lawyer. In college, I'd taken a couple of courses sort of immersed in the civil rights and it posed me to the ways
00:06:40
Speaker
different groups that use the law, learned the law and had used it to their advantage in some cases. So I took a seminar in the Black Panther Party. I also took a Spanish course, a Spanish language course that was called Chicano culture where we learned also about how people in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement use the law to their advantage as well. And so then that made me interested in sort of wanting to learn about this tool. I decided to become a law professor in part because at one of that same time my college professor
00:07:11
Speaker
There was a program that was designed to encourage people of color to become academics. And she had encouraged me to apply for a grant with her to be a part of this program. And so I did research over the summer with her, and I thought, oh, I really like that. And someone else in the mentor said, you should think about being a law professor. So I went to law school thinking, oh, maybe I want to be a law professor because I like this aspect of that work.
00:07:38
Speaker
but I decided to go to graduate school in a completely different field. And so I guess the sort of the lesson behind my origin story is really that, you know, exposure and exposing people who don't otherwise have exposure to different opportunities and fields is really important. And so whenever we have the chance to do so, whenever people who are listening have a chance to do so, it's really important to do that. Absolutely. Thank you. I'm going to go to Danielle Holly Walker next.
Danielle Holly Walker's Legal Inspirations
00:08:08
Speaker
Great. I love hearing everyone's origin stories. I think this is always tremendously interesting for, you know, everyone listening to the podcast to hear about our path into the law. So my origin story literally started at my origin when I was a, my father was a law professor, the first black law professor at SUNY at Buffalo. And a few years after I was born, we moved to Houston.
00:08:34
Speaker
And my dad became a professor at Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University. And he's still a professor there, has been there, I guess that's about 40 plus years now that he's been on the faculty there. So I spent a lot of time as a kid with other faculty kids sitting outside of faculty meetings, waiting for our parents to be done with the meeting, running up and down the hallways of Thurgood Marshall School of Law, sitting outside his office as he met with students.
00:09:03
Speaker
And there was something about the place that just felt very natural to me, even as a kid. I loved the law school, loved going there, often asked to be dismissed from doing piano lessons or ballet or whatever else it was to go hang out with my dad. And so from pretty early on, like I even went to classes.
00:09:24
Speaker
like evidence and other classes. And so I really knew from a really early time, probably by the time I was five or six years old, when someone would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would always say, I want to be a lawyer and I want to be a law professor. And so that's pretty strange for a little kid to say, so I got lots of interesting reactions. My mom was also
00:09:43
Speaker
She was an accounting professor, had a PhD in accounting, and she taught at Texas Southern for many years, kind of right across the street in the business school, and then later taught at Texas A&M University for a large part of her career. So it was wonderful growing up in that family of academics. And I have to say, even growing up in a family of academics, when I actually went to law school and then went into practicing law and into teaching, there was so much that I felt like I, you know, didn't know, felt like I was
00:10:13
Speaker
still a little bit behind what what maybe some other people who were attending law school knew. So I always tell people like even if you feel like you have kind of you have a lawyer in your family or know other people who are in the law, I think the kind of the way that our law schools and the profession are built who favor some over others definitely shows up even when you come from
00:10:35
Speaker
a family where you may have a lawyer in the family. That's an excellent point. All right, Daniel Conway, last but certainly not least.
Danielle Conway on MLK's Influence
00:10:44
Speaker
Well, thank you. My origin story with the law started in my row house in North Philadelphia in a very small room where I had a record player and I got a record probably from my mother and it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's
00:11:05
Speaker
I have a dream speech and sitting in my room by myself, I had conjured up mythology owing to miseducation that Dr. King was a lawyer. He sounded to me like what a lawyer should sound like. And so sitting in that room playing that speech over and over again, I decided there I was going to become a lawyer. So I conflated his speaking with
00:11:34
Speaker
lawyerly advocacy. And I never really shared that desire with anyone in my family. As I mentioned, my mom, she was a single mother raising four kids. I was the last of the four kids. So she had a lot to worry about. So I was sort of an autopilot kid and I had very good teachers, but probably like many people, I didn't have teachers of color. One teacher of color, Mr. Fell in sixth grade, I remember him was
00:12:03
Speaker
very, very supportive, but he was the only teacher of color I had all the way through high school and even into college. And so I nurtured this mythology throughout college. And I went to college knowing I was going to be a lawyer, but at this time I did disclose to my mom sort of between high school and college that I wanted to go to law school and
00:12:33
Speaker
You know, she took that up and she decided she was going to go to law school at night because I had communicated this to her. And so while I was getting through high school, she was getting through Temple Law's evening law school program. And we graduated at the same time. She got her JD when I graduated high school from the high school of engineering and science.
00:13:03
Speaker
And she was studying for the bar and I was going to college and it was just an amazing thing to watch my mother do that largely because I had expressed that interest from listening to a recording of the I Have a Dream speech and just making up that Dr. Martin Luther King had to be a lawyer.
00:13:30
Speaker
That's a great story. And did she, did so, she got her law degree and then did she, did she practice? Yeah, this is, I think really an interesting part of the story. My mother, having been a black woman who was older, couldn't get the typical jobs that one would get out of law school. She was in her, um, early to mid 40s.
00:13:57
Speaker
She did actually clerk, which was interesting because I never really learned about clerking, but she did actually clerk with Ted McKee. When she finished that clerkship, she couldn't get a job. And so she held out her shingle in the basement of our house and started taking cases that came in the neighborhood. And she had an accounting degree undergraduate, which it took her 10 years to get.
00:14:25
Speaker
She took that accounting degree and started doing taxes for people in the community and started doing criminal law representation, defense representation for people in the community. And my mom made bank.
00:14:43
Speaker
in our North Philadelphia community. I love that. That is fantastic. That's such a great story. And it reminds me, so my mom was a registered nurse. And when she went into nursing, you didn't have to have a BA. And so she ended up going back to get her BA when I was in law school.
00:15:03
Speaker
And so she and I graduated the same year. I graduated from law school, and she got her BA in the same year, which was pretty wonderful. And watching her, she was a better student than I have ever been, quite frankly, and incredibly focused. And it was really wonderful sort of watching her have that experience and watching how it shifted, how she thought about herself, and also how she thought about her life, which was really great and sort of speaks to the power of getting an education, a higher education.
Law School Experiences and Teaching Philosophy
00:15:33
Speaker
so i want to switch gears and talk about law school and in particular i remember when i made the transition i was a public interest lawyer when i graduated from law school did that for a few years and then started teaching in the learning program at nyu
00:15:49
Speaker
I remember how disruptive it felt to come back to law school even though I was coming back as a professor and not as a student and part of that was because I did not enjoy law school and so it felt a little oppressive to be back at a law school.
00:16:08
Speaker
I wonder what kinds of experiences you all had in law school and whether those experiences impacted who you became or the persona that you brought to being a law professor, whether in good ways or in bad ways. Andra, can I get you to answer that question first? So my experiences in law school were mixed.
00:16:34
Speaker
I both liked it and didn't like it. So I started off with law school thinking I'd come from this really small, progressive, sort of tight, not perfect liberal arts community. And I came to law school and I came to law school thinking that I was going to be coming to a community where people were really interested all in justice. And it wasn't the community necessarily that I expected.
00:17:00
Speaker
Not everybody was coming with the same things that I had in mind and that, and I shouldn't have expected that, but I did expect that. And so I came to there and then I knew, also knew less information. So people were talking about things like, I didn't know what law review was. People were talking about firm names and they were saying the firm names and they knew what the different firms were. They would say them and they had meaning to them. And I didn't know what it was. And it sounded like.
00:17:24
Speaker
the string of names sounded like blah, blah and blah to me or blah, blah and blah. I didn't know the distinction between the various things. I didn't know what a law firm partner was. There were so many things that I just didn't know. And so I remember thinking, boy, these aren't my people. And I remember thinking, maybe this isn't the spot for me. So I recall having those feelings in law school, you know, certainly as a student of color, there's lots of alienation in the way that the law is taught because
00:17:52
Speaker
You're taught that these things are, you're taught that this is objective. And there were so many opinions that were counterintuitive to me and we were expected to accept them as just and being fair and, you know, expected to, to view the reasonable person standard or things that were expected to be a standard that were deemed to incorporate everybody's experience as incorporating everybody's experience. And it just didn't. And I didn't have a language for explaining why it didn't at the time.
00:18:20
Speaker
And so then those things can be really alienating. And so I had those experience. And at the same time, there's this excitement in learning this new language and being able to see the various connections between the various things you're learning in all these different classes. And so intellectually that was really interesting. So there, you know, it was a mixture of things. And then I think just being a student who was probably thinking about money and resources in a way differently than some of my classmates.
00:18:50
Speaker
That was on my mind, so I remember also when I was applying for clerkships and thinking about flying around to do clerkship interviews and staying in the homes of various friends who had friends who were in different cities to interview with different judges, trying to save money in that way because you have to pay for your clerkships and pay for where you stay and all those things. So all those things really shaped
00:19:15
Speaker
how I came as a professor because I think for me, I could see all the ways in which, you know, marginalized students felt marginalized in law school and the ways in which, you know, you could come to law school and there was an assumption that you had particular kinds of knowledge that you might not have because of whatever background you brought. And so to me, when I was a professor, I would always try to teach in a way that didn't assume knowledge
00:19:43
Speaker
based on any particular background because that was how I felt like people approached law school when I was a student. They assumed a certain base level of knowledge based upon their experience that you might not have because of whatever background you came from. And so I approached my teaching in that way. I tried to approach my deaning in that way in terms of also informing the faculty and my colleagues about being aware of those things in terms of how we
00:20:12
Speaker
make our environment more inclusive and make the climate more welcoming for all students. And in terms of programming, the things that we think about, right? So I try to think about all the ways in which I thought about, Oh my gosh, I don't have that. How do I figure out how to pay for that? Or how do I figure out how to do that?
Howard University's Role in Addressing Racism
00:20:28
Speaker
Like, you know, the figuring out how to get a suit, you know, like, Oh, that's an expense I hadn't considered, or figuring out how to pay for clerkship interviews. And how do you make those things all accessible? So those are all programs that we have
00:20:40
Speaker
implemented at BU. And so I do think I bring those experiences and also just trying to stay in touch with it in connection with students to figure out what are those things that they're experiencing so that we can try to make things as inclusive
00:20:56
Speaker
as possible. That makes sense. Absolutely. Thank you. We actually had, we started having our career services office started doing field trips to law firms just so students could have the experience of being in a law firm because we had so many students, particularly first-gen students who had never even stepped
00:21:19
Speaker
into a law firm before, right? And so the intimidation factor of that could be so great. So we just wanted them to experience the space. And as you say, Rangel, there are so many pieces that some people come to law school already firmly entrenched in them. And for others, it's this completely mysterious world and mysterious process. So to have somebody who's thinking about that as students are coming in is so necessary for so many folks in the law school environment.
00:21:47
Speaker
Karla, what about you? Were you a person who liked law school, had a good time in law school, and how did your experience in law school impact who you became once you were a law professor? So, initially, when I started law school, I was terrified because I
00:22:07
Speaker
was thinking that, oh my goodness, all of these people here are so smart. And am I going to make it? Do I have what it takes to make it? And I had a scholarship. And you had to maintain a certain GPA to keep your scholarship. And so I was anxious whether I was going to be able to achieve that GPA.
00:22:29
Speaker
grades are curved and keep my scholarship which was basically necessary for me to continue my studies. So it was it was very nerve-wracking at first and the the Socratic method and you know when I was in law school at Howard you had to stand when you were called on in class. They addressed you as Mr. and Ms. and it was very formal and
00:22:54
Speaker
I had a very, very strong rural country accent from rural Oklahoma. And when I spoke, no one took me seriously. And one day in class, one of my professors, Spencer Boyer,
00:23:13
Speaker
had called on me and I knew the answer to this question. He'd gone through the entire class and the hypothetical was if you contracted for a stud and the person selling the horse delivers a gelding, is there a breach?
00:23:31
Speaker
And he goes to the entire class and then he finally comes to me. He's like, my maiden name was White. He's like, Miss White. What is the answer? I'm like, absolutely there's a breach because the buyer can't breed with the gelding. And he knew I grew up on a horse farm, so he knew. I would know the answer to this, but he starts laughing. And I'm thinking, I know I'm right. Like, why is he laughing?
00:23:58
Speaker
And he said, I'm sorry, Ms. White, but if you want anybody in this profession to take you seriously, you have got to get rid of that country bumpkin accent. Wow. And the whole class just erupted. And I'm sure, you know, like all the bludges drained from my face. And I said, well, with all due respect, Professor Boyer, if you go into a courtroom in Bryan County, Oklahoma, you better have an accent like mine.
00:24:24
Speaker
That's too shay. For me, Howard, it was just such a wonderful experience because I was so removed from a legal profession. I'd never seen a black malaire. I'd never seen a woman malaire. I had just read about these people that they existed. I had read about Thurgood Marshall and the fact that he went to Howard. And so I felt like I was so privileged to have the opportunity to be there.
00:24:53
Speaker
And I remember it being like a few weeks in when I realized I didn't even know that all of your professors were lawyers. It was a few weeks in when I realized all of these black people who are teaching me are lawyers. These people are just rock stars. So in my mind, I just had the most amazing opportunity presented to me.
00:25:15
Speaker
was just so grateful to be there. It was such a wonderful experience. And at Howard, you know, as a black person, you don't have to deal with the racial baggage that I see students dealing with, and predominantly white law schools. And so I never had to deal with that. I just had to figure out contracts and property and, you know, I just had to deal with learning the law. But
00:25:37
Speaker
All of our professors, you got the friends that they were rooting for you. They were like surrogate parents. While they could terrify you when they called on you in class, you knew that they were rooting for your success and you knew that you belonged there, right?
00:25:54
Speaker
And it was such a nurturing environment for me. The other thing is because I came from rural Oklahoma and rural Texas, I came with a socialization in the public school system that I had in Texas and Oklahoma that racism was a thing of the past. Dr. King fixed that and we're good now. Oh, wow. So when I got to Howard, it was very eye-opening for me.
00:26:22
Speaker
to see the way that racism evolved over time and how you had to have a sophisticated understanding of that evolution to even be able to see how racialized oppression was continuing to happen in our society. And so it was truly transformative
00:26:46
Speaker
for me in terms of the person that I was and the professor that I became because it really opened my eyes to systemic racism and taught me what that was. And more importantly, how to identify it because it looked so different from the racism of the 1960s, right?
00:27:07
Speaker
I loved being at Howard. When I started practicing, I was a deputy attorney general and I had committed to that job because I was supposed to work in the Civil Rights Division.
The Impact of HBCUs on Diversity
00:27:22
Speaker
When I got sworn in, I told that I was being reassigned to the Insurance Division. I absolutely hated it. It wasn't the work that I wanted to do.
00:27:31
Speaker
And I ended up calling Professor Boyer, the one who had laughed at me in class, and I said, you know, I really miss law school.
00:27:40
Speaker
And he just started laughing again. And I said, why are you laughing at me? And he said, that's because you're an academic at heart. He said, the people who love law school make great law professors. So he really planted that seed. And I said, do you think I have what it takes? And he said, absolutely no doubt.
00:28:02
Speaker
And again, it was Spencer Boyer and, you know, professors at Howard encouraging me and telling me that yes, I had what it took to become a law professor to enable me to conceptualize myself in that role. So yes, Howard, Howard definitely shaped me as, as a lawyer and shaped me in terms of my
00:28:26
Speaker
I don't really want more Howard. I felt just so much more not only equipped to deal with racial subordination and racial oppression and racism, but also I felt so prepared as a lawyer. Howard gave me an outstanding education.
00:28:51
Speaker
And for that I'll be trying to be grateful and Howard really is the reason that I have been committed to education equity throughout my time in higher education and why I believe so firmly in the continuation of HBCUs.
00:29:08
Speaker
Well, that is such a perfect segue, because as you were speaking, I was thinking that I wanted to pose a question to Danielle Hawley Walker next, because you, Danielle, are the only one in this podcast who is the dean.
00:29:24
Speaker
And, you know, every few years there will be some eruption of discussion about why do we still have these schools and what purpose do they serve and why should people support them and why should people go to them. I'm sure that that's a question that you.
00:29:40
Speaker
on one level have absolutely no interest in continuing to have to be responsive to. But I also think it's helpful sometimes for people to hear the answer to that question. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, and I service as somebody who's the child of people who are Howard grads and the sister of someone who's a Howard grad.
00:29:57
Speaker
Can you talk about the ongoing importance and the incredible persistence of HBCUs and particularly law schools, the important role that they play in the profession? Thank you so much. I mean, I feel like Carla's answer really, I mean, gives everything, you know, about the importance, the current importance of the HBCU Law School. There are six HBCU law schools
00:30:24
Speaker
We are the only private HBC law schools, all the other HBC law schools, UDC, Southern North Carolina Central, Texas Southern Thurgood Marshall, and Florida A&M, all state law schools. And so they have a very particular history of, of course, most of them being created as alternatives in Jim Crow, in the Jim Crow era, so that their state schools did not have to integrate.
00:30:52
Speaker
But even with that history, I think the relevance of the HBCU Law School, I was given one statistic in particular. Of all the Black judges who have ever sat on the federal court, 50% of them went to an HBCU, either undergrad or for law school. So you're talking about a very small group of schools that make a huge impact on diversity in the profession. When you think about
00:31:21
Speaker
the leaders in our profession who are African American. I think we see some of that in this group right here. So often there is that HBCU connection because I think what I see in the classroom and having not attended an HBCU and I've taught at two other law schools, I think I see the contrast very clearly when I'm in the classroom teaching, but also in doing my academic leadership work. And I think the difference is exactly what Carla said, it's that
00:31:50
Speaker
inherent belief that we are all excellent, right? So instead of this notion that every day inside your law school is a fight, a fight for legitimacy, a fight about whether you even belong in the space, those things are assumed and it's assumed that not only will you do well at the law school, but that you have an obligation. Once you have excelled in that environment,
00:32:18
Speaker
to take your education and to use it affirmatively to better the outcomes in your own community and for people who have been marginalized throughout history. So I think it's a mission, but it's also a feeling of being able to let go of that kind of most basic critique of the essence of who you are, right? To not have people question that,
00:32:47
Speaker
but instead to be able to focus on the work. I think I was shocked at the difference in my teaching when I came to Howard. So I taught, I've taught administrative law for years, taught civil procedure for years, and now I teach legislation and regulation. The first time I taught administrative law, something that Angela said also struck me was the questions that my students asked at Howard questioned the premise of almost every case I taught.
00:33:13
Speaker
I taught for years administrative law very in a very straightforward, traditional way. I went to Harvard for law school, had a very traditional legal education that I have to say left me after my first year, not really wanting to continue law school, which was a shock. After having planned my entire life to be a lawyer,
00:33:32
Speaker
I went to my first year of law school and I was frustrated. I could not understand what we were supposed to be learning that would inspire the kind of work of Charles Hamilton Houston or Marshall or Pauli Murray, the people who were my heroes in the law. I didn't see any connection between what I was learning in law school and how you would become someone like that.
00:33:55
Speaker
And it was an incredibly disappointing experience my first year. And I think the only thing that really recovered it for me, I really did almost leave law school after the first year. The only way, the only reason I didn't is because I had invested so much money in the first year of my law school education. But my second year, I took a class called civil rights project that put us together, law students together with public policy and students to work on civil rights cases. And in that moment, taught by people like Chris Edley,
00:34:23
Speaker
and Pinda Hare and Gary Orfield, I realized, okay, I can still be a civil rights lawyer. Like I made this choice to come to this particular law school, which seems to be almost, you know, doing the opposite of what education should do, which is inspire you into your dreams and to, into the achievements that you think are most important to you. But I found my little, you know, my little corner of the world, you know, so civil rights, civil liberties, law review.
00:34:50
Speaker
civil rights project, working in Balsa. And I think what that has meant for me in the HBCU context is to tell my students, there will always be someone there to ask you, why did you go to Howard?
Creation of the Anti-Racist Clearinghouse
00:35:03
Speaker
Why didn't you go to another school? I said, never be afraid to explain to those people to the point where they almost cringe in embarrassment.
00:35:10
Speaker
the excellence of the choice that you made, right? And the way that it has propelled you towards meeting the goals that you have in a sense that there really are no limitations. I think that's what inspires me so much about the Howard Law environment is we never talk in terms of the limitations.
00:35:29
Speaker
It's always about empowerment and what can we do. And I say this for even the student who has the worst experience, right? So I'm not someone who believes that everyone who comes to Howard loves it and really has a great experience. We have students who struggle just like at every other law school, but I have never heard students say, my Howard Law School education made me feel less than when I came in.
00:35:55
Speaker
made me feel that I was less than. And unfortunately, I hear from law students all over the country when I do panels, et cetera, that too often that power law students make black students feel. That they cannot reach the goals that they have and that they don't have a real place in the profession. And I'm proud to say that I think the HBC law schools empower students in the complete opposite way.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you so much. I actually think that that's a nice way to move into the next part of the conversation, which is to talk about the, the law dean's anti-racist clearing house, because a piece of that is really thinking about, you know, what are we doing in law schools? How are we helping students from marginalized communities
00:36:39
Speaker
understand the law and folks from majority communities understand the law and how it works and how it's impacted communities of color, you know, all these sorts of issues. So I always I always turn to you, Danielle Conway, to talk about the genesis of the anti-racist clearinghouse. So would love would love for you to tell that story again about how this project came together. Well, I'd love to do that, but also by connecting my experience as a Howard University School of Law alumna.
00:37:09
Speaker
and the past question you asked, and then I'll try to connect that to the Anti-Racist Clearinghouse Project. So I looked at law school as something therapeutic, even restorative. And so I'll get back to that when we talk about the Anti-Racist Clearinghouse Project, but I think to connect what my classmate, Carla,
00:37:33
Speaker
had talked about as a 92 graduate and also our intrepid dean, Danielle Holly Walker, who is leading our institution and connecting it to its legacy. It's really important to call out something that was said by Dean Holly Walker, which is
00:37:54
Speaker
how people ask you why you attended this school, why you attended in HBCU. And really what they're asking is, why would you do that at the start of your career? Why would you hamper yourself by starting there? That's what they're really asking. And I remember being asked that question when I was deciding on what law schools to attend. I had received a partial scholarship
00:38:25
Speaker
to the University of Virginia School of Law. And I was contacted by the Balsa chapter at UVA Law School, and they were assigned to recruit me. And when they asked me, well, what other law schools have you gotten into? And the first law school I said was Howard University School of Law, and they gave me a full scholarship.
00:38:55
Speaker
And the next question out of those Balsa member at UVA mouths were, why would you go to that Black school? And the minute I heard that, I made my decision. But that wasn't the only reason. And this gets to what I call the therapeutic and restorative waters of Howard Law.
00:39:23
Speaker
is that that very summer I was also simultaneously grappling with the fact that I had been falsely arrested by New York City police officers. And I had been charged with resisting arrest because I wanted to know why I was being arrested. And having to go through an indictment process, having to go through the humiliation
00:39:53
Speaker
of that kind of treatment solidified why I needed to be at an HBCU because I needed to be repaired. I needed to not be seen as just another Black person who was a plague on society. I needed to be seen as someone worthy of being invested in
00:40:22
Speaker
And I needed to be restored in my faith in the rule of law, something I had talked about that had originally sparked my interest in the law when I was eight years old. So that's why I chose affirmatively to attend a historically Black college and university for law school. And they did not disappoint me. I was restored. And so I
00:40:52
Speaker
I think connecting that to the AALS Law Dean's Anti-Racist Clearinghouse Project is this word restoration. Is this need when we are experiencing traumas at the hands of police impunity or those who are allowed to escape any kind of scrutiny for their actions against Black bodies
00:41:22
Speaker
that restoration was so necessary because I felt as though I was paralyzed yet again like I was when I was falsely arrested in New York City. I felt that same paralysis upon hearing about and living through the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, of Breonna Taylor, of George Floyd, and all of the others that have preceded that
00:41:53
Speaker
And so trying to work through that paralysis came this need to reach out to all of you on this podcast to try to see some way in which I could move forward both as a leader in a law school, but as a mother of a Black son, as a sister to three older Black brothers,
00:42:19
Speaker
I had to find a lifeline to try to get through that paralysis. And so when I reached out to all of you and you all responded in kind with the need for that kind of sister ship and that kind of motivation to move forward, to do something impactful as a result of being leaders of these law schools and using our platform to try to move some change, some real meaningful, positive change.
00:42:48
Speaker
That to me was the root of the AALS Law Dean's anti-racist clearing house and the work that we did together to actually speak with one voice and to speak powerfully with the platform of our position as leaders and to speak as sisters, to say, we are going to do something about this and we're gonna do something using the tools that are the rule of law. That was the restorative part.
00:43:16
Speaker
of this project for me. Yeah, I love that. And obviously we'll provide the link for folks to access a website where they will be able to see all the resources that are there.
Commitment to Addressing Injustice
00:43:28
Speaker
They'll be able to see all of the statements that law deans put out
00:43:31
Speaker
after George Floyd was murdered, there's music, there are books and articles, there are questions that law schools should ask themselves if they want to audit to see whether they are a law school that can call itself anti-racist. So there are lots of opportunities for people to use that website, I think, in positive ways.
00:43:53
Speaker
There are certainly people who are law school deans who take the position of I'm not, I don't want to talk about current events. I don't want to talk about what's going on in the world unless it's something that is, you know, obviously impacting my law school and my institution. I'm just going to stay.
00:44:12
Speaker
out of that realm. But one of the things that's clear from the work that we've done with the Clearinghouse as a group, but also sort of individually the work that we've been doing, is that none of us are taking that position. All of us feel like you have to be able to talk about the world to take positions.
00:44:29
Speaker
From your perspective, why was it that you don't feel like, you know, being a law school dean means being quiet unless it has something specific to do with your law school? Why do you feel like yours is a voice that you want to be able to use in this way that is about being impactful, both about your institution, but law schools in general, and frankly, the law in general?
00:44:53
Speaker
Well, I think it's because first and foremost, we are lawyers with a professional obligation to speak out against injustice. We are the guardians of our democracy and we are charged with a special duty to see that justice is done.
00:45:11
Speaker
And so for me to remain silent in the face of injustice would be a breach of my ethical duty as a lawyer in my mind. And then aside from being a lawyer as a black woman, I feel I have a moral obligation to speak out because a lot has been given to me. A lot was given to me by Howard University. A lot has been given to me by the black community. So I feel like I have been put in a position of being able to have a voice
00:45:41
Speaker
when many people don't. And so I have an obligation to use my voice to speak out against injustice and to do what small things I can to make a difference. And certainly, as Dean of the Law School, I have that small domain where I can make a difference. And I have the privilege of working with the faculty that adopted the Dickinson Law Resolution, the Kingston Dickinson Law Faculty Resolution on anti-racism.
00:46:10
Speaker
And so I feel like we all collectively have a duty to work to make our law school more inclusive, more equitable,
00:46:23
Speaker
and to better prepare our students to be advocates for racial justice. It broke my heart to hear lawyers saying, there's no systemic racism. And I really have to own that, right? As a law professor, because as a law professor and dean, I need to make sure that no one graduates from Washburn University School of Law without understanding what systemic racism is, what it looks like, how to identify it,
00:46:52
Speaker
because I think a lot of lawyers are saying that it doesn't exist because they really don't understand what we're talking about.
00:46:59
Speaker
Painfully true. Absolutely. Angela, I want to ask you to follow up on what Carla just said, which I think is such an important point about, you know, what are we teaching our law students before we send them out into the world to become lawyers? So as a law school dean and as a person who has the power in many ways to steer the ship,
00:47:23
Speaker
What are the things that you want to see law schools doing that you don't necessarily see all of them doing right now? Number one, I want to echo everything that Carla said, it was just really beautifully said. I think that the other thing that you want to see law students doing that we don't see them doing right now is thinking more broadly about the law, right? So number one, and part of that is the way that we teach, we've got to be teaching them more
00:47:51
Speaker
about the law. Right now, some people do. I think that there's more and more people who are adding context and contextualizing the law that they're doing. So I think that's one thing, because a lot of times students will say, we don't want this extraneous stuff to be coming into the classroom. We just want to be focused on the doctrine only. And what we're missing is that all that stuff that they view as being extraneous, whether it be
00:48:19
Speaker
bringing issues about race or gender or whether it's simply understanding how history has shaped all of this, right, is really critical to understanding how the law is operating in that particular moment, whoever that client is of theirs in that, you know, in that particular matter. The fact that they have to understand all of those contextual matters to understand how that's operating there. And I think that we have to do a better job of teaching them that, but they also have to do a better job of understanding that.
00:48:48
Speaker
and not seeing the law as being this like tiny, very, very narrow thing. But, and I think that tied into that is also sort of understanding students need to be prepared to represent their clients, zealously understanding how they represent their clients in these big cases. But I think that the other thing that students don't do enough of, and that we also have to do a better job of preparing students to do, is to thinking about how do you address
00:49:15
Speaker
problems from a more systemic matter, in particular people who are looking at working on more government cases, public interest cases. How are you addressing systemic issues in your cases, right? So we do a great job of teaching students how to represent one client on one discrete matter, but we don't do a great job of teaching them how to use the law to really dismantle systemic structural
00:49:44
Speaker
issues, right? And the law isn't always designed well to do that, but we don't really do a great job of teaching them how to use the law as a tool for doing that. And obviously we have great models, right? When we look at, for example, as Danielle Hawley Walker mentioned earlier, the works that Sarah Good Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston did, but we don't do a great enough job of getting students to do that. And part of that is, of course, also the context, like understanding broadly
00:50:10
Speaker
other issues and understanding other disciplines, right, the ways in which other disciplines intersect, how that should be operating to shape the case, shape your arguments. The final thing I will say is, and a lot of people have written about this, is getting lawyers to understand, too, the broader argument. So it's not simply about the argument that particular case, even the larger impact litigation cases, but it's
00:50:39
Speaker
It's also how do you win the broader arguments in the public, right? So how do you win the narrative argument that gets the broader public to sort of, to adopt the sort of the overarching view or the overarching principle that is part of any particular case or that's really sort of needed to win any particular case. And so I think that we also haven't taught people how to sort of do that kind of lay storytelling that would allow people to win an argument outside of a sort of a very, very closed
00:51:09
Speaker
room of people who are people who understand our very language of law, which is limited to people who've only gone to law school in some ways. Absolutely. I'm so frustrated that this is a podcast format because I'm such an active listener and I'm nodding so hard at everything that you folks are saying. There's way too much wisdom in this conversation and I'm so appreciative of
Deans' Desired Legacies
00:51:32
Speaker
it. I want to jump to Danielle Hawe Walker and then
00:51:36
Speaker
I'm going to tell you all what my last question is going to be so that you all can be thinking about how you want to respond to it. So my last question for everybody is going to be, what's the legacy that you want to leave at your law school? So before we get to that, Danielle Holliver, I think one of the things that you said that was so powerful is that when you got to Howard, the students who you were teaching were already so primed to cast a critical eye.
00:52:05
Speaker
And I wonder, because you've taught at Howard, but you've also taught at other institutions, you know, I can obviously think of the reasons why students who go to Howard would bring a critical eye to the law.
00:52:19
Speaker
But if you're in a classroom where students aren't doing that on their own, what are the ways in which you think professors and the institution can help students to do that work, particularly when people are dealing with all this anxiety and they want to do well and they want to just know what the rules are? Is it going to be on the exam? How do we do this other work if we think that that's a part of what our obligation is as institutions? That's such a great question. So my previous law school I taught at the University of South Carolina.
00:52:49
Speaker
And I was the first black woman on that faculty. And I think there was a, you know, almost a suspicion, right? Every time I stepped into the classroom in civil procedure or an administrative law, with also the knowledge that when I came to South Carolina, I taught the first race in the law class there. So students also knew that I was teaching that class. And I think they were always, you know, looking for, oh, is she going to try to make an issue of race in this class?
00:53:18
Speaker
What I learned in some ways was mostly in my Race in the Law class, where the first time I taught it at South Carolina, I was the only Black person in the room. And I found one of the best ways, and I think this applies to really every class in our curriculum, is that I spent a lot of time with them just reading primary documents, right? In South Carolina, for example, there is widespread notion that the Civil War was not started because of slavery, right?
00:53:44
Speaker
So that's something that, you know, public school students in South Carolina left many of them with that impression. So, you know, we would start by reading, you know, the constitution of the Confederacy and articles of secession by South Carolina, you know, with slavery, you know, the, if we've ever been to, you know, we've all been to, you know, slavery museums, et cetera, plantation.
00:54:06
Speaker
of visits where they teach that slavery was a benign institution, and many of my students had those views, so I would have them read slave codes. I think in those ways, reading primary documents has always been, I think, very powerful, and it's something that obviously in the law, that's one of the skills that we're teaching students to do. The other part of it is, you know, I loved what Carla said about it being a part of our obligation as lawyers,
00:54:33
Speaker
and a part of our upholding of our democratic values in a multiracial democracy to never pretend that race is not at the center. It isn't the center.
00:54:44
Speaker
of everything that we teach. If we want to teach about the rule of law, we must teach about race. And so I think reading those primary documents, but also being willing to engage with students on this topic in an open way in the classroom. And that's the other thing that I always made sure to do. If I heard whispers in my civil procedure or administrative law class that I was talking about race too much, I would absolutely talk about it in the classroom. And you know, that's a little bit of a tightrope. I don't recommend that everyone try it, but that was always my approach.
00:55:14
Speaker
was, okay, why do we need to talk about Dred Scott? Is this a case that's in here solely because of the racial issue, so in civil procedure? I'm like, no, it's an important jurisdiction case. And even if it was just about race, how are you going to be a lawyer in a state that is almost 40% African-American? If you don't know anything about the history of African-Americans in the United States, it will be impossible for you to do your job as a lawyer well.
00:55:44
Speaker
if you don't understand all of the people that you will be serving and interacting with as a lawyer. So I was unapologetic and I continue to be unapologetic, I think, in settings about this notion that race is not at the margins, it's at the center and you will never be a powerful and effective lawyer if you don't understand those issues and make an effort to make things better than the way that you left them.
00:56:12
Speaker
Absolutely. And that's, that's a, that's a really wonderful way to get into the last question that I said that I wanted to ask everybody. And I'm actually going to, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to start with Carla. So it's the legacy question, right? What is it that you want to leave behind at your law school? What are you building there?
00:56:31
Speaker
Yeah, I hadn't thought about this until you posted 30 seconds ago. So I guess I would say that I want to leave institutional structures and practices in place that will ensure that Washburn continues to be a place of inclusion that
00:56:54
Speaker
It continues to live up to its original charter of being a place for everyone, a place where the core value is the belief that everyone is entitled to improve themselves through education.
00:57:09
Speaker
and hopefully I will continue to work on our diversity and improve that in not only the student body, but our faculty and our staff as well, and that my legacy will be that when I left Washburn had achieved its peak in terms of diversity, inclusion, and equity. Perfect. Danielle Conway, the legacy question.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yeah, I have two ways of thinking about this. First, I am excited that Penn State Dickinson Law as a community is a leader on anti-racist education. And so I think that's the greatest thing that would demonstrate a meaningful legacy in the times that we are living, but for the times we will live in.
00:58:02
Speaker
And I was asked this question when I was a Dean at the University of Maine School of Law. Funny, I was asked this question on a radio show and they asked me then what was my legacy that I wanted to leave. So I can actually speak to that. When I answered that question, it was simply to leave a legacy of humility and integrity for the benefit of
00:58:29
Speaker
those who are coming after us. And I answered that not as an individual, but as a member of a community. And what it really meant was how are we all gonna link arms around the rule of law? How are we gonna do that so that we truly achieve equality and justice for all? So it's never an individual legacy. It is always a community legacy of humility,
00:58:58
Speaker
integrity and allegiance to the rule of law. Excellent. Thank you. Andrea, legacy. Yeah, this is a great question. And honestly, I hadn't thought about it, although I've been thinking, I've been thinking in a couple of ways about how, you know, watching, for example, President Obama's legacy, you know, how legacy can be undone. So really quickly in some ways, some things can be undone.
00:59:25
Speaker
I think that much of what I would say would be a line of what Carla said, Dean Price said, would be a line of institutionalizing, what would have been trying to do, institutionalizing practices that make the school more inclusive, that have worked to lessen the impact of some of the ways in which we have been unknowingly reinforcing inequities in the law school. One thing I would add would be
00:59:55
Speaker
a legacy that has helped to put more of a public interest work and the public interest community more in the center of the law school legal profession, right? Because I think for many public interest students, their experience and the import of that work seems to be put more on the margins. And it's a very hard thing to do in a world in which a firm work tends to get centered.
01:00:23
Speaker
So I think that would be a legacy that I would like. And I would say the final thing would be, and this is all pipe dream stuff, of course, a legacy of return to greater need-based aid. That is a good one, definitely. All right, Danielle, Holly Walker, you've had the most time to think about the legacy questions. So what's the legacy that you want to leave at Howard?
01:00:48
Speaker
You know, one of the things that I was most focused on when I came to Howard and I still am is this notion that Howard is a living school of civil rights and that we aren't just a legacy school, but that we are very much in terms of the work of our faculty and students and our alumni really in the project of racial justice. And so it, to me, it felt like, you know,
01:01:11
Speaker
And Howard, it's both, you know, I said, it's both gift and curse that we talk so much about the legacy of our law school. We want to make sure. And it's one of my most important priorities is that students feel empowered to know the work that you have to do. You could be that person who's mentioned in that same breath, right? That's not work of the past. There's so much work to be done in education.
01:01:35
Speaker
climate justice, environmental justice, closing income inequality in the wage gap. There is so much work to be done in the racial justice space that I want our community to feel on fire in the way that Houston and Marshall felt on fire in the mid 20th century for us to have that fire at Howard Law right now. That's one of my biggest
01:01:59
Speaker
wishes is for that and we've been really you know working towards that and creating more resources and including the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center and working just to make sure that all of our students don't just graduate from a legacy civil rights law school but they feel like they had
01:02:15
Speaker
that experience of really working towards racial justice while they're students and then after they graduate. And the second thing is just to create more resources. I mean, it's not a mistake that we're sitting on this podcast with two deans who had scholarships to Howard University School of Law.
Conclusion and Gratitude
01:02:32
Speaker
It is really important. That's one of my kind of most critical legacies is to build, you know, I want Howard Law to get the same legacy gift that the medical school just got from Bloomberg.
01:02:43
Speaker
which is to essentially make law school free for all law students at Howard just because the work that we do is so necessary and so critical to the legal profession and to our democracy that I feel that every single one of our students should be able to go to school tuition free.
01:03:01
Speaker
That's the big dream and that's the one that I continue to work on every day is to make Howard as affordable as possible for all of our students so that they can pursue the work that they're most passionate about when they graduate.
01:03:15
Speaker
Well, that's amazing and I will be sending all the good energy out into the world to hope that that happens for you and for future students at Howard because it certainly would be incredibly impactful. I want to thank all of you for the time that you have spent with you and with each other today. I have said before and will continue to say that being able to be a dean at a time when I can work with women
01:03:43
Speaker
like the four of you has made this job imminently more bearable than it otherwise would be. So thank you all so much for being here, for doing the work that you do, for being the examples of leadership that you have been for me, for your students, for your faculty, and for other folks in the legal community. It is incredibly meaningful and incredibly powerful. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's been such a pleasure.
01:04:10
Speaker
Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you for having us. The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations, minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige of reputation of a large, nationally known university with a personal small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.ruckers.edu.