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Critical Race Theory Reading Group: Tues. Sept. 20th
Join us for a discussion on the overrepresentation of African American students in school discipline led by Professor Chopp. Please read the attached article, “African American Disproportionality in School Discipline: the Divide Between Best Evidence and Legal Remedy,” and come with questions! When:…In Wake of Affirmative Action Victory, Minority and Low-Income Students Still Face Barriers to Higher Education
By Luis Arias Associate Editor, Vol. 21 Executive Editor, Vol. 22 Minority and low-income students remain underrepresented at most of our nation’s universities. Although many institutional and societal problems contribute to the low minority and low-income student enrollment rates, one contributor is especially troubling. These students lack access to the…UW’s Unequal Treatment of Student-to-Student Violence: The Case of Jarred Ha
By Jennifer Chun Associate Editor, Vol. 21 Contributing Editor, Vol. 22 NOTE: Revised January 31, 2017. On January 25, 2015, a University of Washington (UW) junior named Jarred Ha[1] was involved in a violent incident with Maddison Story, a female UW student (and a rugby player) and Graham…Being black at a PWI: “We are all ConcernedStudent1950”
By Saeeda Joseph-Charles Associate Editor, Vol. 21 After students, faculty, and even lawmakers called for his resignation, the University of Missouri’s system president, Tim Wolfe, finally stepped down earlier this month. On November 2nd, graduate student Jonathan Butler launched a hunger strike, which he said would end…Eastern New York prisoners v. Harvard College
“We might not be as naturally rhetorically gifted, but we worked really hard.” – Alex Hall, 31, convicted of manslaughter By Saeeda Joseph-Charles Associate Editor, Vol. 21 In mid-September, three men, all incarcerated for violent crimes, shared a stage with Harvard College undergraduates, ready to debate.Schooling the Police: Race, Disability, and the Conduct of School Resource Officers
On March 25, 2015, police officers effectuated a violent seizure of a citizen in Kenner, Louisiana: [T]he police grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her away [from the tree]. . . . [She was] lying face down on the ground, handcuffed with her face pressed so closely to the ground that she was having difficulty breathing due to the grass and dirt that was so close to her nose and mouth. An officer was kneeling on top of her, pinning her down with a knee squarely in [her] back. Several other officers, as well as several school administrators, stood around the scene watching. [She] was crying and yelling[,] “Help, I’m hurting.” The handcuffed individual was a Black, ten-year-old child who has been diagnosed with autism. On the day of the incident, she “began acting up in class, running around the classroom, climbing on desks, and knocking down classroom chairs.” After she climbed out of the classroom window and up a tree on school property, school officials called the police. Instead of responding to the situation in a manner appropriate for a fourth grader with autism, officers responded with handcuffs and a knee in her back. In Mississippi, a twelve-year-old diagnosed with bipolar disorder “was handcuffed in front of several classmates and put in the back of a police car outside of [his middle school]” after “los[ing] his temper in an argument with another student, and hit[ing] several teachers when they tried to intervene.” Following the incident, the boy was briefly admitted to a mental health facility, then “charged with three counts of assault.” In Virginia, a Black eleven-year-old boy diagnosed with autism was charged with disorderly conduct and felony assault of a police officer for his acts of kicking over a trash can in school and trying to pull away when a school resource officer grabbed him. Unfortunately, the facts in these elementary school students’ cases are not rare. Over the past few decades, schools across the country have adopted extremely harsh discipline policies to control student misbehavior that may be caused by an underlying disability.Mainstreaming Equality in Federal Budgeting: Addressing Educational Inequities With Regard to the States
Great Society reformers targeted poverty as the defining characteristic for a novel federal education policy in the United States in 1965. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reincarnated within the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, distributes financial aid to disadvantaged students within public schools solely based upon students’ socioeconomic status. This Article does not dispute that financial resources improve student outcomes, but this Article argues that Title I’s funding formula is ineffective, and a new funding scheme – specifically, a mainstreaming equality funding scheme – must replace it. The implementation of this funding scheme will require Congress to acknowledge that poverty in the United States is not a mere set of behaviors and attitudes but is intricately linked to race and class. Mainstreaming equality schemes require that public bodies assess the impact of their policies on equality of opportunity and monitor any adverse impact on the promotion of equality of opportunity. This Article describes how such a scheme would address disparities among students. Second, this Article argues that Congress should define beneficiary groups based on characteristics additional to socioeconomic status, including measures of cultural isolation and local tax revenue contributed to public education. Third, this Article establishes that a federal mainstreaming school funding scheme based on “layered disadvantage” and its multiplicative effects will both acknowledge and address long-time, covered attitudes about race, poverty and privilege in the United States and the ways in which those attitudes continue to enforce a paralyzed outcome, especially for African American students within public schools. Finally, by examining mainstreaming equality models implemented in the European Union, this Article considers in detail the methodology for conducting mainstreaming equality within a federal school funding scheme as implemented by Congress with respect to the individual states.Trajectory of a Law Professor
Women of color are already severely underrepresented in legal academia; as enrollment drops and legal institutions constrict further, race and gender disparities will likely continue to grow. Yet, as many deans and associate deans, most of whom are white, step down from leadership positions during these tumultuous times in legal education, opportunities have arisen for women of color to fill those roles in record numbers. However, there are individual and structural barriers preventing access to the leadership level. Significant hurdles have long prevented women of color from entering law teaching. Thus, this Article provides evidence to support the thesis that ongoing changes in legal education will likely continue to create barriers both to entry and advancement for women of color law faculty members and those who aspire to join legal academia. This Article draws from quantitative and qualitative analyses of data drawn from the Diversity in Legal Academia (DLA) project, a landmark mixed-method study of law faculty diversity, which utilizes an intersectional lens to focus on the experiences of women of color in legal academia while also incorporating those of white men, white women, and men of color. Empirical findings reveal that structural barriers (i.e., outright discrimination) as well as more indirect obstacles prevent women of color from joining legal academia in meaningful numbers and also preclude women of color who are already legal academics from taking on leadership positions. Law school administrators and policy makers should work against these structural and individual barriers to increase and improve faculty diversity at all levels. Greater diversity in legal academia generally, and leadership in particular, will not only provide greater opportunities for particular law faculty members, but will also have a positive effect on law students, legal education, legal academia, and the legal profession overall.Saving SC State: historically black college struggles to survive
By Luis E. Gomez Associate Editor Vol. 20.; Contributing Editor Vol. 21 South Carolina State University is facing dwindling admissions and funds. It is a struggle that is common among black colleges. The school is facing a $17 million budget deficit, and lawmakers are not inclined to lend…Justice and Law Journals
What is the role for a law journal in advancing justice? What is the role of a justice-minded practitioner in furthering legal scholarship? And what is the intersection—practically and normatively—for law journals, legal scholars, practitioners, and justice? This brief Article attempts to lay a foundation for answering these important, but oft-neglected, questions. In the following conversation, a frequent contributor to the Michigan Journal of Race & Law (MJRL) and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal posit some ideas on how legal scholarship engages with justice, and how race-conscious practitioners can interact with race-conscious legal scholars.
