 Thank you to everyone who is showing up today. Thank you to the behind the scenes people at CUNY Law and RW Law, who, although you cannot see them, you see the work that they have done to get us here today. Thank you to our speakers. My name is Nicole, and I'm one of the editors of the book, Integrating, Doctrine, and Diversity. Today's session is the second in our speaker series. We had planned a total of five over the academic year, which we're going to be cosponsored by RW Law and CUNY Law. And after the success of our first event, I'm proud to announce we're also partnering with Jurist to present the series. So please check out Jurist for resources, which will be on their site, which will complement the speaker series. And Chris is going to send a link in the chat to the first of the series that has come out. Today's session will feature a discussion among three book contributors about the fear that some professors have that they won't know how to react when something goes wrong with the diversity discussion. Let me start by introducing our speakers in an abbreviated way. Our first panelist is Dean Elena Allen, who's the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She teaches Family Law, Health Law, Public Health Law, Professional Responsibility and Torps. Our second panelist is Professor Todd Brower, who is a Professor of Law at Western State University College of Law and also serves as the Judicial Education Director of the Williams Institute at UCLA. Our third panelist is Professor Frank Deal, who is a Professor of Law at CUNY and teaches courses in voting rights, common law and civil procedure. I'm going to start with you, Professor Deal. Frank, as he told me I could call him. In your chapter in integrating doctrine and diversity, you say, law professors enter class armed with two tools, their personality and their ability to explain the materials, books, et cetera, they will be utilizing. I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. Why do you think some professors whose stock and trade is their personality and ability to manage a classroom are so afraid of this topic of when diversity discussions go wrong? Well, first of all, Nicole, thanks so much for having me here. It was a pleasure actually writing the chapter for the book. It was a pleasure watching the discussion that took place a month ago, and it's a pleasure being here today. So I think that first of all, there's a lot of tumor in the society, a lot of change taking place. I don't have to name the things, the pandemic. I mean, you know, the Trump election, a lot of things happening, which have certainly infiltrated the schools, meaning that our students, you know, come to us during these difficult times, still trying to essentially get a legal education. Certain observations that those students are really attuned to the dynamics happening outside of the society. And I think that they, you know, really hope that we as professors are responsive to some of those dynamics taking place. And I think that therefore, because we're all in this midst of change, it's really kind of hard to predict, you know, just the direction that things are going to go. And I think that the search for this direction is one that has us all somewhat anxious in terms of being able to be responsive to our students. I think that when it comes to the race questions, it becomes even more of a concern because that is the cutting edge of so many of these issues. I see that as a professor, in my experience in my lifetime. So I think there's just so much uncertainty out there and that uncertainty brings about an anxiety of being able to respond to it when you're talking sometimes across generations to people who are coming at these things somewhat very differently. Thank you. Elena, this may be too blunt a way to ask the question, but do you think the fears that professors have about diversity discussions gone wrong? Fears that seem to hold professors back from fully engaging in these diversity discussions in the classroom are well-founded? Or does this feel more like an excuse to continue the status quo of maleness and whiteness in a law school doctrinal classroom? So this is going to be too blunt of an answer. But I liken the diversity discussion to parents talking to their kids about sex. It's uncomfortable. Nobody is really rah-rah to do this, but it's still vitally important. So I think the discomfort is real. People are uncomfortable, but that's not in any way, shape, or form or get out of jail free card. It needs to happen. And so for me, you have to get past the uncomfortableness. You just have to push through it. I think it's real, but it's a worthy goal. We need to be discussing this. And I think it's imperative that we do it. Thanks. Todd, I'd love to hear what you think about this. Well, so obviously I am the older white male on this panel, but I actually agree with both of my colleagues. In other words, it is uncomfortable and it's uncomfortable for all of the reasons that people said, plus the one, honestly, we law professors like to be in control. We're in the front of the classroom and people are writing down what we say or at least typing what we say or we hope so. But, and that puts a lot of pressure on us, but it doesn't make any difference. Elaine is right. You just have to have the conversations and you have to have the conversations, the way they are and the way that they develop. You have no control over that really. You just have to roll with it and think about what am I going to do? What would I like to do? It's like planning any other part of your course. You have to have a goal in your mind. You know, why am I doing this? What do I want people to get out of it? And so I think beyond that, you just have to push through the discomfort and the more you do it, I won't say the better you get because I'm not sure actually if that's true. But the more you do it, the more discomfort level goes down a little bit because once you start having conversations, that's the most important part. I think what's unique about it, maybe not totally unique, but there is a vulnerability that is required of us, that may not be required of us when we're teaching other things in our topic. And it's that vulnerability which makes the conversation so rich, but it also makes them really scary. But I sort of stand with you all obviously, that's not a reason to not do them. It's just a reason, maybe that's the reason you feel as uncomfortable as you feel. Elena, in the book, you describe a statement you make on the first day of tort law, which starts, I am obviously a black woman. As such, my life experiences inform how I view tort law. As a person of color and as a woman, I am particularly sensitive to how the evolution of tort law has largely evolved without input from women or minorities. I'm also sensitive to ways in which tort law perpetuates inequality. I realize that some of you simply want to learn what the law is and that you might not be interested in the broader policy discussions. However, discussions about broader policy objectives are critical. I noticed that you simply stated, some of you simply want to learn what the law is and that you might not be interested in the broader policy discussions. Can you talk a little bit about why you make the statement on the first day and how your students generally react to it? Yes. So I think a lot of students come to law school expecting to learn the law. They want to know what the law is and anything outside of that is not really interesting to them. And I've heard it's a waste of their time. And I try to explain to students today the law is constantly evolving. It's not static, right? So it's changing. But be more importantly, what I want them to learn is that the law is a tool. It's a means to an end. And we want to make sure that the law is achieving the end that we want it to achieve. And so if we are not engaging in the broader policy discussions to make sure that the law is achieving what we want it to achieve, then we're missing out on something really important. As for their reaction, it's mixed. I think there are some people who, even after that discussion, still sort of roll their eyes and say, I'm trying to indoctrinate them. But I think for sort of the middle, they're sort of an eye-opening. Aha. Law school is more of a memorization. This isn't just a memorization exercise. So I think it's mixed. Thanks. Todd, in your chapter, you explained that understanding litigants are in the thick of people's lives because their problems involve parties who cannot easily exit the ties binding them to their adversaries. They're family or neighbors. As attorneys, we need to understand all types of relationships and families in order to best serve our clients. That knowledge must extend to both conventional and non-traditional relationships, communities and people familiar to us or not. We should explore those connections where we might expect to find them and we might overlook them because of our implicit biases. Your seemingly simple explanation of the approach is really refreshing. So do you have students who, like Professor Allen, just want to learn what the law is to the exclusion of understanding the litigants or understanding the contacts or understanding who is and is not in the discussion? Oh, of course. I think we all do. So I was speaking specifically about property. Property is different from other first year courses in that these people have relationships and that the problems they have often, as I said, are with families or neighbors, people with whom they have relationships and are going to continue to have relationships, unlike a tort freezer who's going to go off and do something else. So that the relationships are important both to the material that I'm teaching and to understanding the larger context. In other words, how do we understand how someone is going to plan to take care of their family without understanding what their family looks like without understanding the pressures in society on that family and the prospective future that their children may or may not have based upon who they are where they live, all of these things. By coming at it from that perspective by integrating it into the doctrine, like, why do you want to know this? What difference does it make whether this is an indifesibly vested remainder or a vested remainder? That doesn't mean anything to anybody except that these are tools to do something specific. And that's what I think Elena was getting at, but in a different context. So that by talking about the tools in the context in which they occur and the needs that people have, I think it breaks down some of the barriers like, why do I need to know this? Just give me the facts. Just give me the rules. Because the rules aren't rules. They're tools. And that it's important to see the whole diversity discussion in that same way. That it's a tool to do something with and therefore be part of our lives as lawyers. Thanks. I get really triggered by these discussions. I just want the rules. I just want the rules, you know, as if the history of all this of how things came to be in these cases are somehow not like just facts. And so some of it, sometimes it's hard to have these discussions without getting all rolled up. So, Frank, the real question we're all here today to discuss is, what do you do when things go wrong? I have a few strategies that I employ, but can you talk a little bit about what successful strategies you employ when a 1L discussion or any L discussion about diversity becomes contentious, problematic, or even harmful? I think you're muted. Okay, thanks. I actually think there are some things that you can probably try to do to sort of prepare for a situation when the situation arises because it is going to arise at some point. And that is essentially this. I really try as best I can from the very get-go to have a relationship of respect with the students in the sense that I respect them and I respect their concerns and their desires and I kind of expect some of that respect in turn. And I really try to keep the relationship as smoothly as possible from the very, very get-go. I really think that when something goes wrong, my belief is that you're going to get a lot of, you know, students will cut some slack for you if there's an overall respectful relationship that you've already established. If on the other hand, the relationship is a tense one from the beginning and you kind of screw up in class on one of these questions, you know, I think students are going to be less forgiving about it. So I think that, you know, in particular, I try to establish as good a relationship as possible with the students and anticipation that, you know, something might come up with also because I think it works as an end in itself. But when something happens, and of course it depends on what it is, and I think it's very difficult to generalize about these things, but one of the things I would certainly suggest is to apologize back off and apologize and not try to talk yourself out of a situation. If you've done something or have said something which drives the students back up and it kind of becomes an issue, I think that, you know, since you are the one who's running the classroom and your statements which have come up, I think you need to sort of back off and apologize without really, as I say, trying to explain your way out of it. But on the other hand, there are certain situations where the problem comes not from something you've said, but, you know, something that another student said which offends another student in the class. I think those are a little more difficult to negotiate because I think on one hand you sort of have to be fair to, you know, the class as a whole and trying to represent just, you know, respect what the issues are and try to respect the positions of both parties as much as you can, but I also think it's important to, you know, depending on what the circumstance is to, you know, be clear that there are certain things that are not tolerated in the classroom. So, you know, again, speaking very generally about this, I think it's kind of hard to be too specific, but I do think that when you're responsible back up and apologize, when you see it's a conflict between students to try to mediate as best as possible but not try to make it sound as if, you know, it's equal, you know, both sides deserving of equal sympathy because that may not be the case at all. Thanks. It's hard because they're sort of these like, first of all it happens really quickly and also there are these sort of competing interests where what would like offend or is offensive to some people isn't to others and it's all happening in real time. So, I sort of reflected about some of my biggest oh my god moments and I just wanted to share a story. Last semester I had this moment in class and I wanted to share it because it was a, you know, Nicole gone wrong moment. I co-teach a class called Race and the Foundations of American Law and my general philosophy that I share with students in the syllabus and on the first day and then throughout the class is that I am going to mess something up and I am not always going to get it right and the students might mess something up, my co-teacher might mess something up or probably not because she's amazing but I am definitely going to and I in order to teach this class give myself the grace of knowing that not that it makes it okay but I think the cleanup and the fix and the struggle through it is sort of the lesson not just like the messing up part and so last semester towards the end of the semester we were discussing possible solutions to the systems of oppression in American law and a female black student raised her hand and I called on her and she posited that the only solution that she could see that would be effective would be a race war and so surely this was, you know, my moment of things going horribly wrong I am teaching and one of my students is like actively what appears to be advocating a race war and I am like feeling this like pedagogical car crash and slow motion of oh god what did I say why did I call this person and now that she said it what do I do and I got super defensive and it was like a media in my head is like surely there is some solution that doesn't involve violence and a race war and I'm getting uncomfortable and I want to interrupt her and I want to placate her in the class and I want to say please stop talking about a race war like no no no that's not what the point was guys and I want to smooth it out and I want everyone to feel better and I want to quickly pivot away from any talk of race war and it was just this yikes moment and instead I took a few deep breaths and I let her finish talking and I told the class how I was feeling and I said I'm like white middle-aged lady law librarian who's a fourth generation pacifist and my first reaction to that comment was stop and you're wrong and that I was like feeling super defensive but then after I told them that I stopped and I just said you know even though everything that that student is saying is making me deeply uncomfortable and even though my brain is screaming there has to be a better way my student deserves her point of view and she deserves to be able to express it and the class deserves to hear it and I deserve to be able to share my vulnerability and discomfort but also uplift her sincerely held point of view and so what I said is hey class this made me really uncomfortable but she has a space here and like I want to make sure we all heard what she had say and so I sort of amplified my point and the discussion moved on and I just wanted to share that technique keeping your own sort of defensiveness in check as a way to try I think that we could talk about how I could handle that better and not like make it about me and my identity but I did like feel like I refuse to give in to my own defensiveness and wanting to like smooth things over maybe because of my gender maybe because of my race maybe because my personality and just like sort of let it go so Elena can you talk a little bit about any strategies you have which have been successful on how what do you do when the conversation takes a turn so I think Frank sort of captured what I wanted to say which is I think you begin with a safe space creating a safe space for your students you begin with talking to them about their professional identity and that this is an opportunity for them to learn to disagree respectfully and I think when you sort of set parameters at the beginning of the discussion they have almost always risen to the occasion for me and so I have had very few I can only think of two and twelve years where I would say things sort of went south for me and when they did I would say okay take a deep breath everybody collectively take a deep breath and let's think about if what was said was what was intended and you know I've told the student to think right and the student will self-correct in both times they self-corrected and they said well that was sort of remarkable and so I have found that students are very forgiving and that no student wants to be a pariah and so if you give them that space to sort of reflect and then give them the time to correct they've always corrected for me that's great that's really great to hear especially that you've tried it and it's been successful all the times that you've tried it I also think the letting it simmer beyond one class can help so especially if it's like something that you said or something that happened we want to have reacted the perfect way the first time but we might not have and so it may take coming back to it at the beginning of the next class or even addressing it over email and maybe that's not the best solution but it can be a solution to get out of the moment and then respond over email in some way Todd can you talk a little bit about any successful strategies that you have in these situations well so my thunder has been stolen a bit by what everyone else has said because I absolutely do think that both parts are crucial starting from the beginning of class with respect and it goes two ways and with vulnerability in terms of like I am who I am and I'm going to make mistakes that's fine it's a cooperative learning experience shared between all members of the class so I think that's important it's also important of course to create the ground rules for what discussion looks like across the board including these issues because as part of my thinking they're not really different from other parts of the course and so that student responses to other students is the same thing we would ask and that we model that behavior every time we talk about student responses and students respond to other students and that if you start with that it is true I think students do both rise to the occasion when necessary self-correct when necessary and you can also treat so in addition to you want to rephrase kind of idea I sometimes just explore what the issue means in other words if you treat someone with respect you treat their ideas with respect and so that it may be an idea that may not be comfortable to me or may not be comfortable with other people in the class but it not only deserves to be heard but okay can you explain why this is can you talk more about that to see if we can make a fuller point there it's similar to the self-correction but it doesn't necessarily mean that the person corrects what they wanted to say it means that they simply explain what they want to say and we have a bigger context again for our discussion and sometimes just things go wrong I mean and you live with it and you can come back as you say the next day and and if you've made the mistake I think Frank is exactly right you apologize and because you're human too and I think that's part of that respectful treatment of you and your students and the bonds between you So I guess we all talked about sort of setting out ground rules at the beginning or expectations that the discussion would go does anyone want to share any rules that they put in place in their classrooms well one rule that I have is don't interrupt in other words the student who's speaking has the right to speak and finish what they're saying and then there can be a response but we're not engaging in this free-form fighting and I actually wanted to say one other thing that I forgot so the question was about diversity becoming contentious, problematic or harmful harmful for sure you need to figure out problematic yeah probably contentious I'm not so sure always contentious is a bad thing the truth is not every space can be safe all the time and that uncomfortable conversations that have to be had so that's not a ground rule and I'm fixing things around but it was something I want to point out is that not everything can be placid and sometimes that's part of what is Frank or Elena do you want to add on ground rules or discussion expectations well you know I don't start with ground rules meaning that I try to set up an atmosphere of respect for the class in general but that's not really the same thing as ground rules I mean what I mean by that is that you try to know what their names are one of the nice things about Zoom is you know what people's names are I think it's very difficult to do that unless you have a seating chart because you don't follow what I had to do when I was in law school just try to know what people's names are right you know you get a question from a student and you kind of respectfully respond to the question so I don't really kind of start up a ground rule other than trying to create an atmosphere of respect but as we go along and things pop up then you might have to start kind of directing putting some rules in place to deal with those situations I mean one of the things that's happened is there are rules for the chat because all kinds of things are up there that end up permeating the class so we kind of have to make rules about that and I've been doing that kind of as I go along because on one hand I believe especially on Zoom that the students really should have the opportunity to communicate with each other because they're not in person they're not talking to each other that much but at the same time it doesn't work because some of the disagreements get kind of difficult and hard to deal with so I've been kind of doing it as I go along and it's kind of hard to say I mean I've had some really difficult situations in fact one where the dean had to intervene I was teaching a very small voting rights class maybe 10 or 11 people in there and one of the students was much more conservative than the other students in the class he was a white male who was an evening student and it turns out that every time we were having a discussion his perspective would really upset the other students and one particular African-American woman would really go off whenever he basically said something and that was a really difficult situation to deal with because I mean it was possible to sort of you know in terms of talking about doctrine and the law to you know kind of respect the necessity of you got descending opinions and you have majority opinions and a lot of the differences that were coming out in the class discussion were who agreed with whom basically but it actually got somewhat personal because when that went in the class and these two students would add each other just because of where they were sitting right and in that situation I really found that I had to you know kind of start talking to them one on one to figure out just what was going on and sure enough when I went to you know I had one point I really had to talk to one of the deans about that one of the students had been more than one class and it wasn't the student who I expected it to be so I mean you know sometimes these things are really good at hand and it's hard to know just how to deal with them and you're going to sometimes have to ask for help but I certainly wouldn't want to leave the impression that you know these things are easy to deal with we're all going to kind of get caught up in them at some point in time and therefore I think it's fine but sometimes it's just going to blindside you and you know you might have to seek some help Elena did you want to add anything as Todd said number one don't disrupt and number two agree to disagree respectfully those are sort of my only ground rules and I remind students constantly about sort of the building their professional identities and that when you come to me for a letter of recommendation it matters how you delivered your point and how you advocated for things and so I try to remind them that you know these conversations matter and they can be constructive or they can be harmful and they're in control and if they you know sort of delve into the harmfulness it can impact them negatively whether it's a letter of recommendation or just their their fellow colleagues wanting to interact with them. Thanks. So this question is for anyone who would like to answer it so the choice if there is one is engaging in these conversations are not engaging in these conversations and it feels like what I've heard from students is that there are professors many professors perhaps who dart away from the conversation and so what typically is a comment is made that's offensive by a student and it hangs there and instead of like choosing to delve in on it and discuss it the professor is like okay well let's get back to our textbooks and so anyone who wants to respond what is the danger of having a student or a white student or a majority student make a racist or sexist or homophobic comment and leaving it unaddressed in the class. So I would say I think it's important to distinguish between unpopular and sexist races are problematic because I think there's sort of a great area where one person might take offense but I'm not sure if it's necessarily generally offensive and so I think it's important to impact it to say in response I know this is how you feel but others upon hearing that comment might feel this way because of X, Y, and Z and so I think it's important to build that context and I think Todd was talking about that earlier because most of the time I think when a student makes a comment that is borderline offensive the student does not mean to be their perspective is just different and so I think any way you can sort of bridge that and give fuller context and help students understand that there are different perspectives out there I think that's sort of the way that I try to handle it. I think that that's right. I also think that in fact if it is honest to God racist or any of those other things you have to address it. At some point I'm hopefully immediately but if you're not prepared to do it immediately you need to address it because otherwise it normalizes that kind of behavior and it tears down the kind of respect that we all talked about previously and once you lose or start to lose that then a lot more disintegrates than simply a discussion on diversity in the way I want to run my class disintegrates too and I need to do something about that. Yes I think that of course you can't walk away from a racist or homophobic or sexist statement. I think that the difficulty is really knowing when that's happening. I mean you know obvious statements that can be made which are easily identifiable to spitting in one of those categories. But I think that a lot of the difficult situations I think it's less common to hear those outright racist statements in environments that at least where I happen to teach I'm kind of really proud of that but it doesn't mean they're not out there they just come in a much more subtle form and it's not so easy to identify them. It's not easy to identify them as professors in sort of surfacing differences when we're talking about the law or policies or things like that reflecting that what happens in judicial opinions I think we're sort of comfortable dealing with dissents and disagreement along those circumstances but a lot of the things that erupt in classrooms are not about that and I was having a discussion in one of my classes about the George Floyd situation and it was after the conviction of the officer in Minnesota and we were having a discussion about well you know what why was it that what do you think it was what about action in this case meaning that there was such an overwhelming movement to get the prosecutions in place why did we see it happen in this particular case as opposed to so many of the other police killings which have happened across the country where there's been no reaction at all in fact there's no indictment the officer has no repercussions whatsoever. What was about the George Floyd case that triggered so much of the events which led to his ultimate conviction we were having a discussion about that and you know one student you know a white student saw us talking about the actual video and how watching the video and the police you know for his mother to help and it just that was just cause the eruption which happened worldwide but you know that response drew a hostile response from a student of color who kind of was of the view the white student was I forget the words she actually utilized but shouldn't have been talking about that during the discussion I was like you know dissecting black bodies in a response that people were having to watching a black man go through this horrible horrible experience and that was a very difficult thing to sort of come to grips with as a professor but ultimately you know I kind of had to the talk which I can give a CUNY but it may be more difficult to give out of the law schools whereby we have a mission we kind of choose students because they're devoted to the mission we're all here because we really want to bring about social change and social justice people have different ways of doing about it people have different strategies for doing it but we're sort of all in this together and we have to be able to talk to each other about it in a way which is going to move us all forward I could have that discussion even things out but you know there you know it's harder to identify what the problem is than when you are dealing with an outright racist statement that's the fear I have because I think that some of these situations are so subtle and again you're talking across generations you could miss something and miss the significance of it and as I say this is all happening on Zoom would it even have happened in a classroom? I don't know so there are all kinds of levels to this but I think that the reality is that you don't really get those obvious, easily obvious statements that are somewhat easy to respond to you get this subtle dynamics and getting into those things is like really walking on eggs and I don't think that we're going to get there unless we just keep practicing it and I think we're not going to get there because we don't get it wrong sometimes and if we don't show grace to the students and to each other and ourselves for when someone gets it wrong we did have a question that was in the chat and if anyone wants to answer in the last couple of years or the last year or since COVID do you see the margin for error being slimmer and if so how do you handle that? I'm back in the classroom right now I'm teaching in person for both of my classes I'm teaching public health and family law right now and public health is just a minefield because I'm in Arkansas and we're talking about COVID and obviously COVID is the public health crisis and there are strong opinions on both sides but what I found is an amazing amount of civility in the classroom I think in part because we are together and people are just so happy even though we have a mask on people are just so happy for that community that I don't see people or my students trying to destroy it I think they're trying to have discussions, they're trying to disagree respectfully and they are engaging but I haven't had any sort of anything to go off the rails and I think it's in part because they were on Zoom and they've realized now that we're together there's something special about it so for me I would say no it's my perspective I guess I would so I'm back in the classroom as well and some of my students this year are students that I had last year when we were on Zoom and I noticed that same thing whatever is going on in greater society in terms of people being stressed and fragile and all of these things the classroom is an interesting space because it's different from that and although the outside world comes into the classroom there is this feeling like I've been seeing you for a year from this big and now you're a real person and you're shorter than I thought or you're taller than I thought and that it really is a greater like we're in this together kind of thing so I agree with Elena that there's something that's not going to last all that long but it's going on right now at least in terms of those of us that teach live in person I'm so glad to hear that because we are some of us are in the building and some of us are not and my class is too large so we're going on Zoom but we've been having all kinds of issues at CUNY because we like to think about ourselves as being an anti-racist law school and we are in the process of doing that and it's of course presenting its challenges and I have to say that I often think that I often ask myself what would the struggle be like if in fact we were all in a building because my own sense is that we are exacerbated, the tensions are exacerbated because we are not in the same building talking to each other and seeing each other so we're going to be back next semester but to hear Elena and Todd both say to hear the students are so happy to be back in the classroom that gives me great optimism about coming back so I'm really happy to hear that okay thanks anyone who would like to answer it what mistakes have you made that you would caution other professors about specifically within the context of diversity discussions in the classroom I would say I think at the very beginning Frank said that law professors bring their personality into the classroom and so a mistake that I made early on was not being authentic to who I am and how I view the world and sort of thinking that I sort of had to hide that in the classroom and so I would caution faculty to be authentic and to give voice to things that they believe is really important because I think my voice is powerful and I think for a couple of years I suppressed it so that would be my advice I think that's right I would say by the way that by virtue of the fact that we're the teacher in the classroom our voices are powerful our selves are powerful because people see us in that way and so that it's important to figure out where you are with your comfort level about who you are I've talked already about some of the difficulties that I've had but I want to just share one other story which is actually kind of intriguing to me because this happened a long time ago this happened maybe maybe even six or seven years ago it's a third party standing case and it kind of has to do with the extent to which medical providers can in fact raise claims and litigation for people seeking abortions were not themselves before the court and I was going through the opinion and of course I slipped into the phrase women seeking abortions and a student wrote me an email a very kind general email after the class pointing out to me it's people seeking abortions and not women seeking abortions and I kind of recall that story because this happened a while ago this really happened about six or seven years it was nowhere near on my radar and I really appreciate that the students raised this at the time although I still do it occasionally make that mistake so as I said in terms of being woke I mean it amazes me that six years ago students were so careful about the language and I didn't have a clue right until I basically got the email and thanks everyone for sharing the mistakes they have made because they think that one of the mistakes we make is not being vulnerable and so I appreciate that we're all sort of willing to say this is something I could have done better or I learned to do better over time I want to briefly discuss the materials we use in class we're going to talk about this more in a future conversation but I have you here today so I want to talk about your thoughts about casebooks Todd you specifically discuss the student assumption of the whiteness of litigants in our casebooks saying in the book teachers should challenge the default assumption that property litigants do not have race and white you go on to say classroom discussions should be relevant beyond the close of the semester or of law school but be valuable well beyond into students' legal careers students must realize that diverse people and relationships are part of the legal world by engaging solely with what judicial opinions choose to make visible we sometimes ignore the real people behind case captions can you talk a little bit about why this is important do you have students that shape against this focus on identity and what do you say to them well so I do think of course it's important and it's important because the way cases are written often times litigants are simply described as people who want X but we never really talk about why and why is related to who and who is related to the text and everything else and so it's part of that thing that I talked about earlier that we all discussed the idea that seeing people as people means seeing them in all their dimensions and not just the one that has to do with whatever it is we're talking about easements or God knows what and that wins so I my students pretty much going to be practicing lawyers and they're going to be practicing lawyers in many times for smaller medium sized firms or maybe solo practitioners so that the clientele that they serve and the people that they are solving problems for make a difference in terms of seeing who they are they are not faceless corporations for the most part not that corporations are necessarily faceless either that's a different discussion but these are real people and they're coming to you and you need to understand who they are and what they need and so that we need to talk about not only what the case says but what's behind what the case says and of course I think that's important do I ever get students who push back well in part it goes back to something we mentioned earlier which is from the beginning this is how we read cases and so I don't get as much pushback as you might imagine because in fact from the first day we talk about these kinds of things and it's part of our normal discussion from that perspective if I did I would explain something hopefully better than I said right now thanks Frank did you have anything you wanted to add well I think it's you know I agree with Todd I enjoyed reading his piece in the book I think it's incredibly important to recognize that these cases are about people and about their struggles and why they are doing certain types of things in a life they want to make their lives better so they resort to litigation of some form of fashion and it's really important I think to kind of understand that and be driven by that you know in the essay what I really tried to talk about teaching civil procedure which for some people it's really just a class about rules I try to keep the people in there and really focus on what it is these people are trying to accomplish by the litigation that they have decided to go forward with and it's not going to happen for me but I really wish that at some point in my life it would have really had the time to put together a casebook that really pulled together cases that was set chosen for that particular purpose because of the struggles that people are engaged in but I think that students really latch onto that I remember maybe 10 or 11 years ago you know one of the big things about teaching was the so-called problem method the problem method where you basically taught problems and I remember having a discussion with a colleague he would adopt that method of approaching a subject matter and saying well where are the people in this I mean you know I really think you've got to be talking about people it's people who bring cases the problems would just drop out of the sky so I think the book you use is really important and I think that though the problem is that when most professors put together a casebook they're not thinking about the people who bring cases I don't know if that's going to change but you know I think we should do whatever we can to sort of try to fix that I think that that's like a theme I'm hearing on all sides of this that there is a humanity that needs to be brought to bear and whether that's the humanity focusing on the humanity in our materials or within our relationships or the way we run class or when someone makes a mistake to more fully embrace or continue to fully embrace depending on sort of where we find ourselves I have a question in the chat if someone is brave enough I agree with Professor Diehl that the most challenging issues that come up in class are not outright racist or sexist comments but more subtle dynamics for example it can be a harmful dynamic for a BIPOC student to listen to white students processing and grappling with systemic inequalities in an emotional way for the first time have any of you seen this dynamic rise in class and if so have you addressed it so I'm not sure if I've if I've necessarily seen exactly what the questioner has described but I definitely have witnessed students of color listen to white students grapple with things that they have been grappling with all their lives right and so I think for me I'm always telling stories about parenting kids of color I have three kids and I'm always bringing them into the classroom because I think that majority students have no idea sort of the struggles that people of color have and I think it's most salient when you put it in the context of kids and so I think sometimes when I sort of read a face of a person of color and I can tell that they are sort of having a reaction to something that a student has said I address it privately I say let's come back to my office and let's chat about it what were you thinking like what do you want me to have said do you think I needed to say something if I didn't say something and sort of engage that student of color on a one-on-one level sometimes they need help processing it and they don't want to process it in front of the majority students they just want the professor to take time out with them and talk about it Alina I'm going to go back to you your chapter in the book specifically discusses intersectionality how have your students reacted to being confronted with intersectionality in a doctrinal classroom and has this changed over time I don't think that it's changed over time I think it's still it's all over the board right some get it some don't some have the aha moment I think that for a lot of students it's just getting them to sort of understand that I am black I am a woman and that has a profound meaning for me and for other black women in the class and so I think just sort of highlighting these issues you know we talk about hair we talk about natural hair I find you know in my feminist jurisprudence class I talk about women's struggle about can you wear pants to an interview like I have men all the time in the classroom who look at me and sort of say really and yes it's real and so I think it's really trying to get them to understand that their world view is just one world view and it doesn't represent others Nicola if I may actually say something about the previous question that came from the chat I was trying to think about how to process what I wanted to say and I think I have something of a grip on it and that basically is this which is that I certainly have seen the situations that was postulated about the question but I see it happening when I'm on Zoom because students can voice and students do tend to voice those feelings like in the chat and it kind of raised the issue when I think the situation I was describing a while ago kind of was something similar to that about George Floyd but what I wanted to say was that you know what I hadn't really thought about is that when we get back to the classroom I mean students are still going to have those feelings but they may not put their hand up and say it people put things in the chat that they would not necessarily put their hand up and say in the classroom but the reality I believe is that they're still going to be feeling that even though they don't ever say it so then the challenge is how do you surface it I mean because you know as I said if the students are feeling that because somebody says something and the class is on Zoom they're going to feel the same thing basically sitting together in one situation you get surface in another situation it may not get surface but the dynamic is still there how do you deal with that that's something I'm sort of looking forward to seeing when we actually get back in the classroom to see how that plays out and it's something I think that I'm sort of going to try to be somewhat more sensitive to that sometimes there's some burning thing happening in the classroom but it's not getting articulated publicly at least thanks I'm going to end with a final question from an anonymous attendee which is what does this panel say to those of us who are contract professors without tenure it could be daunting to address these topics in class without a safety net we don't want to shy away from the conversations but perhaps feel not as protected by the administration if things go sideways does anyone want to address that well I'll attempt something so I've been a tenured professor for a long time and it is very different for me that is definitely true and it's different for me being a white professor and a male professor there are different expectations for me and I have different grace periods in doing things that said a lot depends on the administration I mean and that there's you don't have much control over that but that I think you have to feel out what those limits are and within the limits you have you can do your best to bring the topics up because I think they're important the one thing I might say is that by trying to integrate these questions into the doctrinal aspect of the course it allows you to at least be able to say look this is not a distraction this is not an extra this is not something superfluous this is the core of what this course is about I mean honestly it's a terrible situation contract professors that they're in in terms of these pressures but I wish I had better words yeah I mean so I mean that's the place I find myself I'm a staff member and so I know that in some ways I have a lot of privilege but when I sit here with tenured law professors I don't have status and so my answer is you just do it and that's cavalier and I don't intend that but just it was there all along and it is there and we have to do it and it has to be part of the whole curriculum not relegated to a class here and there and it is scary and I get it wrong and I am blessed with the administration that I have that supports me and I but I also live with an awareness that you know it could all go terribly wrong and I let that guide me to do the best job I can do but I also know that sometimes that's not gonna be enough and so I guess mine is just really just empathy yeah I get it and it's hard and I don't know we have to do it anyway Frank or Todd or Alina were there any final comments you wanted to make I want to thank you for the book for organizing the discussion I think that you and your co-authors have really started something that's very special and very needed and so I want to thank you for having the foresight and the vision for starting this project thank you I would agree with that and thank you for inviting me to participate in what has been a really interesting and useful conversation for me and good luck on the second book yeah we just announced book two is headed this way and we're accepting submissions we'll be sending out more information about it so just to end thank you so much to our panelists for being here today and sharing your thoughts and wisdoms and being vulnerable because these conversations even the conversation about the conversation the meta-conversations are not easy thank you to our host CUNY Law and RW Law and Jurist and finally thanks to all the attendees please join us next month for the next installation in our speaker series we will be discussing the concept of space in the classroom thank you everyone