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Expert Report of Eric Foner
Race has been a crucial line of division in American society since the settlement of the American colonies in the beginning of the 17th century. It remains so today. While the American understanding of the concept of "race" has changed over time, the history of African-Americans provides a useful template for understanding the history of race relations. The black experience has affected how other racial minorities have been treated in our history, and illuminates the ways in which America's white majority has viewed racial difference.Expert Report of Patricia Gurin
A racially and ethnically diverse university student body has far-ranging and significant benefits for all students, non-minorities and minorities alike. Students learn better in a diverse educational environment, and they are better prepared to become active participants in our pluralistic, democratic society once they leave such a setting. In fact, patterns of racial segregation and separation historically rooted in our national life can be broken by diversity experiences in higher education. This Report describes the strong evidence supporting these conclusions derived from three parallel empirical analyses of university students, as well as from existing social science theory and research.Expert Report of Claude M. Steele
Report based on 25-year period of research in the areas of social psychology, the social psychology of race and race relations, and the effects of race on standardized test performance.Expert Report of Robert B. Webster
The author’s opinions are based primarily upon knowledge and insight gained in the forty years in which he has been a practicing attorney, counselor, arbitrator, mediator, bar officer, and state court judge. Webster’s opinions are also based in part upon materials described in Section IV.B, within.Expert Report of Kinley Larntz, PH.D.
While working in this matter, the author undertook the task of analyzing the statistical relationship between law school acceptance and ethnicity. In particular, focusing on the strength of the relationship between law school acceptance and being a member of certain ethnic groups, controlling for qualifications for admission such as undergraduate grade point average, Law School Admission Test score, and selection index, and for other factors such as residency in the State of Michigan, gender, and a measure of economic disadvantage, waiver of the fee for application.Turning the Tide in the Civil Rights Revolution: Elbert Tuttle and the Desegregation of the University of Georgia
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. So it was in 1960 when Elbert Tuttle became the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the federal appellate court with jurisdiction over most of the Deep South. Part of the genius of the Republic lies in the carefully calibrated structure of the federal courts of appeal. One assumption underlying the structure is that judges from a particular state might bear an allegiance to the interests of that state, which would be reflected in their opinions. Forming panels of judges from each of several states is supposed to balance those interests, resulting in a less insular rule of law-one that reflects regional, not merely local, interests.Generations: Nanook of the Law School Library and the Classroom
Many of the essays in this symposium are rooted in the Western Law Professors of Color Conference held in Oregon in the Spring of 1998. The University of Oregon minority colleagues, as faculty of one of the co-sponsoring law schools, were charged, among other tasks, with the selection of the conference theme and tee-shirt design. The title “Generations” was chosen to focus on the challenges across the years for law faculty of color.Introduction: Critical Race Praxis and Legal Scholarship
The publication of this symposium issue is an occasion for three distinct and yet related celebrations. First, we honor the Western Law Teachers of Color, whose sixth annual meeting on the sublime Oregon Coast in 1998 provided the occasion for organizing the papers published here. Dean Strickland's preface, as well as Professors Linda Greene's and Jim Jones's essays examine the historical significance of this occasion in greater detail. Second, we engage in a festschrift of a particular member of this group-Professor Eric K. Yamamoto -whose publication of a book this year is a significant capstone to fifteen years of scholarship on racial justice. The articles in this symposium issue address one of Yamamoto's many path-breaking concepts: critical race praxis. Finally, the various pieces published here form a testament to the growing maturity of legal scholarship on race and law, as well as-sadly-the still highly contested legitimacy of this kind of scholarship within the mainstream legal academy as an editorial board of one of the Western Law Teachers participating law schools' law reviews decided against publication despite an earlier commitment. The very fact that there was a politicized dispute elsewhere over the articles published here demonstrates the on-going nature of racial struggle inside the walls of law schools, as well as the strategic importance of law students committed to the principle of racial justice. Thus our obligatory first footnote, which thanks those on the editorial board of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, does not begin to convey the complexity of the interracial dynamics-both alliances and fractures-that undergird this particular legal scholarship project.Beyond the Rhetoric of “Dirty Laundry”: Examining the Value of Internal Criticism Within Progressive Social Movements and Oppressed Communities
Part I of this Article discusses examples of resistance to internal criticism within progressive social movements in order to demonstrate the extent to which such opposition operates as a barrier to constructive dissent. Part II argues that resistance to internal criticism may often result from the embrace of heterosexism, patriarchy, and racism within oppressed communities and among progressive intellectuals, and that any remaining explanations for such resistance are outweighed by the value of internal criticism to progressive theory and politics. Part III offers suggestions-to both internal critics and to the objects of their critiques-for minimizing the potentially negative effects of internal criticism and for advancing a more inclusive conceptualization of justice.Introduction
The last Supreme Court decision addressing the use of race in admissions to institutions of higher education, Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, affirmed that the role of diversity in colleges and universities is both essential and compelling. Since Bakke, opponents and proponents have wrestled with ideology and theory, but have never had the benefit of a comprehensive theoretical framework that has been tested by reliable empirical data. The University of Michigan has drawn on several of the nation's leading, and most respected, researchers and scholars, to develop such a framework and verify its legitimacy with empirical proof. The evidence submitted by these leaders in the fields of history, sociology, education, economics, psychology, and law, confirms Bakke's holding and establishes the continuing imperative for diversity-including racial and ethnic diversity-in higher education.
