 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's program number three in our integrating doctrine and diversity series with the City University of New York's Law School. We're so proud to be sponsoring this co-sponsoring this really excellent and exciting series this year and very excited for today's program, which my colleague Nicole Dyshlepsky will introduce both the speakers and the topic. First, however, I want to say good afternoon again. My name is Greg Bowman. I'm the Dean at Roger Williams University School of Law. And I'd like to start us out by reading a land and labor. Entirely appropriate for all programming that we do at the law school, but in particular for a program such as this one. When I want to start by taking a moment to reflect on the land. They're coming from many places physically and remotely, and we want to acknowledge the ancestral homelands and traditional territories of Indigenous and Native peoples who have been here since time immemorial and to recognize that we must continue to build our solidarity and kinship with Native peoples across the Americas and across the globe. Roger Williams University School of Law is located in Bristol, Rhode Island. And so we acknowledge and we honor the Narragansett and the Poconokit people and so on, the original name of the land on which our campus resides. We also acknowledge that this country would not exist if it were not for the free enslaved labor of black people. We recognize that the town of Bristol and the very land our campus resides on have benefited significantly from the trade of enslaved people from Africa. The economy of New England, Rhode Island and more specifically of Bristol was built from wealth generated through the triangle trade of human lives. National reckoning with our history of slavery and the disparate treatment of black people. We honor the legacy of the African, the Aspera and the black lives, knowledge and skills stolen due to violence and white supremacy. While the movement for justice and liberation is building and we are witnessing the power of the people. Many are still being met with violence and even being killed. As opposed to justice, it is our hope to become agents of change for members of our society who have been met with violence, physical, mental and emotional through our privilege. And as opposed to justice, we believe that our students will still be who will soon be practitioners of law can be and already are agents of change as well. For those of you listening today who are not familiar with this practice. Why do we do land and labor acknowledgments. I want to share with you a statement from the Northwestern University Native American and indigenous initiatives which explains it much better than I could. And I quote, it is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought you to reside on the land and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgments and labor acknowledgments do not exist in a past tense or historical context. Colonialism is a current ongoing process and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation. So thank you again for being here today. Welcome, and I will turn the program over to my colleague and the culture. Thank you. So welcome everybody let me start by saying thank you to those of you behind the scenes at CUNY and Roger Williams and jurors to have worked so hard to get us to today. There is a fairly large team working off camera to make this series happen across all three institutions and we're so grateful for your work. Thank you to everybody who's joining us today, especially our speakers. My name is Nicole. I'm one of the editors of the book, integrating doctrine and diversity. I'm the host of our speaker series. Today's session is the third in the series. We have planned a total of five over this academic year being co sponsored by RW law CUNY law and jurist and please check out jurist for resources that will complement the speaker series. This discussion will be a discussion with two faculty contributors to integrating doctrine and diversity, and a third year law student, and it's focused on the concept of space in the law school classroom. Professors are tasked with navigating interactions with and among students. This can be a challenging task in any class, but particularly when issues of diversity become the focus of class discussion. It can also be challenging to intentionally create an environment where students feel respected and free to share and learn and grow and change and make mistakes. Today's session is about creating space in the law schools classroom. I'm thrilled to introduce today's speakers and grateful for their participation in the discussion. First is Professor Deborah Aaron. And I'm going to use first names for the rest of this because everyone seemed okay with it. Professor is a the professor of law at Seattle University School of Law currently visiting at the University of San Francisco School of Law. And she teaches and writes about criminal law criminal procedure and evidence. Professor Kaylee Murray is a professor of law at Marquette University Law School for research agenda is focused on the politics of participation in patent property and admin law. Professor is a third year student at Roger Williams University School of Law and is a teaching assistant in RW Laws newly created class called race and the foundations of American law. Thank you all for joining us, especially you Gabby. I know you're in the last few weeks of your law school experience and finals are fast approaching. I also know that this is terrifying. I'm going to start with you, Kaylee. In your essay in the book, breaking through silence, the necessary space of the doctrinal classroom. You discussed the work of Sandra Murray nettles, a scholar of environmental psychology and human development, who identified seven necessary spaces that aid in the educational framework for black children. You state nettles framework of necessary spaces would be useful in breaking the silence of the law school classroom for three reasons. Before we turn to the framework. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by the silence of the law school classroom. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. And when I talk about the science of a law school classroom. I'm drawing on a framework that was initially originated with Tilly Olson and a groundbreaking feminist work. It's called silences and she identified silences that have prevented women writers from having sort of a breakthrough on both in their own work. And in their sort of living legacy and when I read silences I read it, I think an undergrad, but it really feels silenced until I went to law school. And I remember my first year of law school feeling very distant from the experience of law school and an experience from what I was learning. And so that experience of silence, I'm stayed with me and when I became a law professor I began to think seriously about the ways in which our law school classrooms silence students and faculty and significant ways and I sort of identify three key, three key silences. The first is what I call pedagogical silence right. What is the aim of a law school classroom and very often in law school. We don't talk very often about the outcome of law school which for it for instance is the exam right so our performance is primarily oral, and our actual test is usually written. Oh, in some cases multiple choice or short answer. And so for many students, the performance of loss, the performance of the law school classroom doesn't help them to prepare for what we actually evaluate and think about and so a lot of what I felt a lot of as a one out was that what I was learning in class actually wasn't linked to what I was actually being asked to do on the exam. The second is sort of what I call performing a silence like how do we perform a construction of self in the law school classroom there's a lot of silence about a what is considered to be the appropriate law school professor and be who is considered to be the appropriate loss, law student, and very often those notions are highly gendered and highly racial right and even starts right. Before students attend law school we recommend books like 1L or think about the paper chase and the types of. Of figures typically a white male typically a white male professor and a white male student and so even before law school we begin sending messages to students about which identities are important, which cells are important in a law school classroom. And so for many reasons people come in and feel a sort of kind of identity being silenced and the last silence I sort of identify and think about a lot is the inclusion silence that is once again when we construct the performance itself in the law school classroom. It excludes students right exclude students who do not fit that norm and so a lot of what I thought about in my pedagogy is how to be a person in the classroom. That is welcoming and that welcomes all identities within the classroom and in order to think that through I really had to think through the types of values that we express within the law school curriculum and the design of the doctrinal core class. First of all, that was the amazing the most amazing answer to a first question ever, and I'm like scared for Gabby and Deb who have to respond after you but like yes, everything. Yes, but I'm going to turn to Gabby and Deb nonetheless. Do you do either of you want to add to that either to the description or the conception of silence or as far as your own personal experiences have you felt silenced in the law school classroom. I'll start. When I think of silence. It isn't always like an active firm. And so I think for me, some of the silencing has been very inadvertent and it's definitely content based. So one of the first examples I can think about is like in property law. There's a lot of concepts that are kind of thrown out there. For me, before I went to Wilson trust. My family doesn't have any sort of background with wills or trust. I don't know how these systems naturally played out. It just wasn't something that was commonplace in my, in my household. And so I found that, you know, leaving property going into a class like wills later. And that's where I was getting a lot of that knowledge for the first time but it was intimidating when, you know, the professor would say, Oh, like, you know when you will X, Y and D to someone in this land and I was like no, I don't know. And I, and I didn't conceptualize that well on the exam either. And, you know, that's not the professor's fault. But I think that kind of like one of those first like I do I belong with my peers sort of moments because then I started looking around and you know some of your classmates are like yeah. You know, so I think that silencing can be really inadvertent and I think that, you know, some of the examples that are often used some of the hypotheticals the language that's often use can be exclusive to certain groups and so that's kind of what I think about with silencing. Right and I will share I didn't use to share this with my students when I started teaching, but I've come to start sharing it over the years, which is I almost dropped out of law school after my first year of law school I felt really really alienated from the law school experience I was a first generation college student. Like Gabby just described a lot of things that would happen in the classroom I had no idea what big law was or a lot of the other things that I seem to be expected to know coming in represented and at the same time. I would read these cases and I would see a narrative in there that I thought was about gender or race or class or something that I thought was really the theme of the case and that's not what I would hear from the professor. And so I would wonder well that maybe that's me maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there because surely if those things were there. The professor who knows this case very well would say something and at the same time part of the classroom experience, at least from my perspective, was you would get called on maybe once or twice a semester. You had to be right or at least you felt like you had to be right. You didn't know from the professor if you were necessarily because the Socratic method in many ways doesn't give you feedback and so you're not really certain. As Kay we said you show up for the final exam and you have no idea. Am I giving the professor what I'm supposed to be giving them have I learned I'm supposed to have learned. And so honestly, a lot of my experience as a law professor is about trying not to replicate the experience that I have as a law student. Thank you so much to both of you. I like feel in incredibly proud that this is a place where we all get a chance to talk about the silence we felt but also to change things. Kayley, can you take us through the nettles framework and explain how it applies to the law school classroom and how it can be used to free us of these silences. Okay, so the first thing I want to do as I explain the method is to frame it against what is the primary method of our law school experience and that is the experience that was undertaken by Charles Ling Dell experiment at Harvard in the 1890s and I always like to bring it back to the case method because I think behind the case method was a certain ideology about how law operates right while operates as a series of as a science right and Charles Ling Dell was reacting in many respects to an earlier model of law school teaching and printing thing right and he wanted to be able to distinguish the law school experience from the experience that had been the primary way most American lawyers were law. Through the 19th century which is that you went to a lawyer and you had Princess with the lawyer and then ultimately you were barred as opposed to a class in which you learn sort of these august principles of legal education. Charles Ling Dell advocated right a the case method study, he believed that lawyers were scientists, and that we could break down law into different sort of discrete principles, and then understand the law in significant respects and I mean there have been many critical aspects of the law school model but I think one of the ways in which the case study method really works against sort of it speaks in a very I think clear tone is it's a hierarchical model right the professor states on the stage, the professor interacts with a student the student in essence is supposed to be by dialogue you with the professor magically be a better lawyer. I think, which is not always what happens, and I think that it is a model that sort of is a model based in many respects one, and I think an inequitable view of who is a lawyer and who counts. So when I was thinking about confronting that model in the law school, I realized that it was not simply enough to change how we undertake the case method, but to question the case method it's effectiveness as a teaching mechanism, and, and also as a teaching mechanism that sends messages, particularly around equality and inequality that I wanted non hierarchical models to think through student learning. And so the first thing I did was think through what I said what the new law school classroom has to reflect I said is equality values and in order for us to have equality values, we also have to have equality methods. So for me, I wanted to look at learning teaching and learning theory that try to grasp well how do you create a learning experience that is equal. And for me that led to the work of John Dewey, right and his model of experience, experiential learning. And luckily, you know, I have a really awesome mom, and her name is Sandra Murray now. She has been writing and thinking in this area for her entire career and she, and I, and my sister actually is a name Elena Murray and she is a middle school principal and also runs an education and equity program at Gales College in Maryland. And so, when I was going to law school, I would speak to my sister every day and she's like how are they teaching you like how are they teaching you. If you come out of class every day and feel bad. What are you learning. Are you learning the law and I would be like, no. And then when I began to think it became a law professor and I felt in many respects in my early career. I was replicating the structures that I had not liked as a law professor so I really struggled with it and my mom introduced me to the theory of John Dewey. But she was also writing at the time on the types of experiences that helped black children on within the American self achieve education and she wrote a really, I think, similar work called necessary spaces which explores the risks of African American self and she has seven different necessary spaces that she thinks are relevant right to learning and right and so she says the first thing that's important about an experiential approach to learning is that it's a experience that we're focusing on not simply one classroom. For me that was very helpful to think through well what are the things that we're doing both in the classroom and out of the classroom that can create sort of again a method that fosters inclusion that fosters diversity and that fosters equity in a sustaining way. And so she identifies seven necessary spaces connection, the experience of relatedness to others practice the experience of play and rehearsal of skills renewal the experience of reflection and recreation of mind body and spirit exploration, the experience of discovery investigation and novelty design the experience of imagining solution building and getting feedback from others resistance the experience of actions that seek to understand apply critical analysis oppression and equality. And lastly but not most importantly empowerment right included including the experiences that increase the capacity of individuals to manage resources make decisions and develop a sense of personal control. And this too, and thinking through what kind of law school classroom I want to create it. I thought a lot about the seven necessary spaces right so when Gabby spoke a moment ago she said very often as a student. I didn't know that I actually had skills that I could bring to the classroom that when I was in Wales and trust in the States, I felt like I didn't bring anything to the classroom because I hadn't had an experience of this particular set of choices. But I was thinking in my head I teach trust in the state's law, and I was thinking actually Gabby your experience is experience of most Americans 60% of Americans don't have a will right and part of my job right is to do two things to you as a student. I have to empower you to understand that your experience is legitimate, what my mother would call empowerment. Right. And secondly, I have to help you understand that the part of resistance to this default state is resistance right that this is actually not a good thing that more Americans should have wills, more Americans should have trust and how do I as a lawyer achieve that outcome from my clients and so when I think about experiential learning, it's not simply a skills based approach which is typically how we talk about experimental learning, right, but instead, right, it instead is a way to build the classroom, but to build learning across different types of spaces and so for me it was actually a really sort of foundational experience and the funny thing is I was like thanks mom she's like I know. So it was helpful to have that kind of dialogue in my family. I just want to go back and tucked on something which is you talked about the case, the case method, and you talk about that in your essay. And so I was wondering if Deb or Gabby if either of you or both of you want to share your perspectives on how the case method may be silencing students with diverse social identities. I'll start with Deb and then go to Gabby unless you have nothing to say. And so, sort of as I had reflected earlier I think it kind of to some extent depends on how you're teaching the case method right I think that if it's the case method. As in, let us go discover the holding of this case and that is all we're interested in that if what students are reading into the case are things that are definitely there that maybe aren't traditionally part of the case brief that students get trained to write where is the procedural posture of the case. There's a piece in this volume that talks about for example critical case briefing and actually incorporating into your case briefing, the critical facts of the case which include things about race class gender etc. If that's not kind of part of your everyday classroom, I really do think that students from diverse backgrounds, like me in law school or speaking they're going I, I see this stuff, and the professor isn't talking about it. So there's probably a problem with what I am learning or a problem with me and so I think that that can be really silencing for students and also again if what you're being asked to do is to answer these questions and you're never really sure whether or not you've given what the professor wants to the professor, then you lack confidence in what you're learning. And there's not really kind of a trust relationship between you and the professor that allows you to think okay I've really learned at least and part of what reading Kelly's chapter was really helpful for me was for putting into words a lot of the things that I thought are helpful like giving students an opportunity, not to just kind of regurgitate what they've learned but to practice consistently to have kind of a sense of experience and play and make sure that your interactions in the classroom are low stakes so that students trust you and believe that you have their interests at heart and to give them an opportunity to consistently practice what they're learning and to sort of give them feedback at the beginning, and then train them how to give themselves their own feedback so that eventually they do have that sense of empowerment that Kaylee talked about. And I'd just like to add that. I had one professor who changed the way I thought of the case method when he asked, so what really is going on here. It went past like the procedure he was like, you know, there, these are real people. What's going on what's the actual, you know, situation and for me that humanized law school in a way that at the time I thought wow law school is really abstracting like the real world to me in a way that I wasn't really comfortable with. Almost like it was desensitizing that you know we were just blowing through cases, and each case you know I'm trying to highlight the right thing so that when we get cold called. I could regurgitate on those things and I was forgetting the human elements. And so, when my contracts professor said that in class, it kind of brought me back down to earth and I, and I my understanding of the case method before law school was, you know, putting yourself in the position of the people. Get make with the decision so you're trying to like understand like why, why, why we're in a certain court why we're in, you know, the place that we're at, but I, I just wanted I wanted the details that mattered. And I think that when we're asked to remember that the people involved in these cases have identity. And that those I that identity affects the reason why the case moved along the way it did. I think that was the most helpful thing in the classroom and it changed the way that I approached the case method as a student at least following contracts one. Thanks, Gabby. This next question is to Deb and Kaylee with the concepts of silence and the Nettles framework sort of on on the table. Let's move to the concept of space. One question that comes up in discussions around and about the book is that of creating a safe space versus a brave space. Do you aim to create a safe space or a brave space in your classrooms? Why and how and what has worked and what hasn't worked for you. And I'll start with Deb and then go to Kaylee. Right. And so I think that, you know, when I saw this question originally is like what is the difference between a safe space and a brave space don't we all want our classrooms to be safe spaces and in a sense right you do want students to feel comfortable and to feel that they are in a place where they belong because if they don't they're not going to learn anything. But I do think now that I'm a bit more informed on what it would mean to have a brave space that that's what I think I'm trying to do in my classroom to make students comfortable having conversations that are often going to be very difficult. I teach first year criminal law students. I teach criminal procedure students. Those are classes where I think it's very difficult even if you wanted to to avoid having a lot of very difficult conversations with students about what the law has been what the law is now what the law ought to be going forward. And so you want students to feel comfortable having those conversations to trust each other and to trust you that those conversations are going to be civil and that those conversations are going to be productive and that people aren't going to feel personally attacked. Some of the things that I've found to be helpful are to supply students and I know one of the things we're always worried about is kind of trading off between the cases we're supposed to be teaching and the doctrinal law we're supposed to be teaching and then bringing in more things for students to read. But I found it to be really helpful to assign students very short often excerpts from critical pieces around the topics that we're discussing because it gives the students the space to talk about the short article as opposed to say necessarily I think which can be a hard thing for students to say you might get comfortable doing that eventually that might not be something you come into law school feel uncomfortable saying this is my perspective because of the background that I come from. It's a lot easier to say. And I think that this is an interesting perspective for us to discuss. So I found that to be very helpful. I found giving students individual quick feedback on things that they do to be a helpful way for students to build trust and to feel more comfortable talking. And I don't know if this is something that Gabby would necessarily agree with. I find at least in my experience that calling on a lot of students during class can be helpful because then every single exchange is much lower stakes. If you know over the course of the semester, you're probably going to be speaking 10 or 15 times. Maybe you're braver about speaking because it's not oh no the spotlight is going to be on me for the next two minutes. And this is the only time anyone in this room including the professor is going to hear from me and judge me. So those are things that I found to be helpful in encouraging students to feel comfortable talking in class. I also think it's helpful. And this is something I've learned over the years to be really upfront with students from the beginning of the semester about their expectations and your expectations for having civil discussion. I think that I used to feel at the beginning of teaching like I shouldn't have to tell students that this is a respectful space in the classroom and we should be speaking respectfully with each other. But I think it is about establishing this expectations and it's even better if you can have a conversation at the beginning of the semester with the students where they are involved in the process of creating that respectful space. Because then if someone puts a foot over the line you can refer back to oh well this is something we all agreed to in terms of how we're going to discuss difficult topics in class as opposed to oh you shouldn't have said that right and so those are things that I have found helpful. And also if you either have rules from the beginning or create rules or agree on rules. It makes it easy to refer back. So you're not, you know calling a time out in the middle of the game instead you're saying oh hey, hey guys these are the rules we all agreed to let me refer back to them, which I think is really helpful. Haley would you like to add to the brave space safe space, how, what have you done what has worked. So I tend to emphasize a resilient space a little bit more. I think, I think last group classes by definition should be uncomfortable. Right. It's sort of pedagogically for two reasons one we're discussing topics that by their nature are uncomfortable. And secondly, because it helps to prepare you for practice to manage right very difficult conversations. And so I don't like safe or brave to the extent that it implies a level of comfort. And so I think a lot more like you're going to have discomfort how do you confront discomfort. You're going to have ideological discomfort you're going to be in conversations as a lawyer with many different types of folks, you're going to be in conversation. When subjects that may not have the outcome that you want and sort of part of your, your, your bucket list or your Catholic as a lawyer is to manage and think about discomfort. And so, I think that for me, I tend to move away from a safe space because I don't necessarily think what my, my students will face when they go into practice are necessarily safe spaces they may face spaces that are really uncomfortable and they have to have. a psychological resilience to manage that set of experience. So that's the first thing I do agree with Deborah that I particularly my one out classes I come in the first day and I say something like, this is going to be different from every law class you've had. And I explained to them all the ways in which they're different and why I'm choosing a different way of teaching. One of the other things that I felt I learned early on in my career was I was being treated differently as a professor of color. Even as the students walked into the class and so I had to manage that. And I had a very innovative way of teaching and my evaluations were insane like students were like what is happening. And so, I had to sort of frame that I was making a series of pedagogical choices. And then also I disagreed with their experience of law school up until that point, and that not every law student has the same experience and not every law classroom has to be the same. And so I to like Deborah have that conversation very early on in the semester. I have really been struggling with this this semester and Gabby is my TA, or Gabby is the TA for my class and it has been a witness to my successes and failures so it's a little bit humbling to have her here today. In particular, I've been struggling with the idea that if I'm creating a safe space for all points of view. I know that there are harmful to some students what what do I do about that. And so the creation of the space for all points of view may limit and I know it actively does limit how comfortable other people feel in the class. So, on one hand, I'm very aware that I have to give students the opportunity to speak their ideas out loud and test them out and rethink them and reformulate them and engage with the class and materials in a way that allows her growth. My growth can always be on my timeframe and isn't always easy. I'm on the other hand, how is allowing this room for growth in a very public loud way, harmful to other students, perhaps like negating their identity or re triggering existing trauma. And then I've also been thinking and I think this is something you just touched on Kaylee about how my own identity may impact how successful I am in creating space for my students. All that by saying I have no real answers. I just have sort of a lot of questions about this. And so I'm going to turn to Gabby your voice is so valuable. From the student perspective, can you talk a little bit about safe spaces or brave spaces and specifically, if you have examples of something you've seen your experience where professor what professors do to create space for you in the classroom or alternatively what professors have done which limits space for you. Um, so I, I don't think a law school classroom can be a safe space. Just by virtue, but I do think there is a possibility for a brave space to exist. And I've had professors. So for an example of a brave space. I have a professor that way that she asked questions. I don't think that she's out to make us trip on her words. I don't think it's deliberately confusing. And from that, I think that the engagement in the classroom is high, because my, my fellow students and I feel more like we feel like we have the ability to make mistakes a little bit easier, but that that furthers the conversation along when some of the decorum that the Socratic method might have in, you know, hinder your ability to feel comfortable to engage even if you do know the answer. You know, the process might be so anxiety inducing that you think about like, oh, are these the right words to say, am I saying this correctly. So I think that when professors engaged with students at a level that I'm not saying it has to be complete. I don't think it has to be comfortable but I think that the law doesn't always have to be confusing. And I don't think the subject matter has to be as difficult as some professors make it to be. These conversations encourage curiosity and from that scholarship. Because for me, if I can understand a concept that it's, you know, bare form, then I can start recognizing patterns and other things. So that's, that's kind of what I've envisioned a brave space as where the professor is willing to engage with students at the level and then build from at their level and then build from there. And, you know, one year is really intimidating because, you know, you're kind of put into the space and the language is new. But I think that, you know, coming into two all year. The stakes are any lower, but I feel like the students that are there have proved, you know, they've proven themselves to a point because we're still here. And we do kind of we do understand the material to an extent and and we're here we're here not just because we didn't drop out or, you know, the interest is still there. Well, I think that, you know, even our class that we're that I'm teeing for right now. I think that there have been like a lot of strides to make it a brave space but I don't necessarily know if this, I don't think that the student engagement is where it could be because some of the material can be. I think it's just hard for people to be able to talk about it in terms of like the level of the material that they're reading. But in terms of where it's failed, I, I think it has to do with demeanor. I think that sometimes professors, whether or not it's intentional, they're not approachable. And so, if their attitude or the way that they're carrying themselves in the classroom isn't approachable I don't think that the conversation is going to be either, or a, you know, a professor can say like, oh, reach out to me office hours X, Y and Z, but if they're not, if they're not giving that energy that that's actually there, I doubt students are going to reach out in the way that they would wish they would. So that's, I think, you know, what a brave space is and, you know, the failures. So you have to invite students to engage with you and you have to mean it. And I think you also have to show some of your humanity, which is a good segue to to a question for Deb. In your essay in the book you write about how your choice of what to cover in the criminal law class create space for some of your female students. So we also spend the last week of class discussing sexual assault. I have spoken to criminal law professors who avoid the topic. And I find that students are anxious about covering it. But I've noticed for several years that there's a segment of my female students that ordinarily does not volunteer in class that becomes very interested in entering the discussion. Can you talk a little bit about this choice of material and how you have seen this create space for some of our female students. Can you tell me how students have reacted. And do you think there needs to be a different approach for a male identified professor. I'll actually start without last part, which is, and it was interesting when Kelly was talking about, you know, coming into this profession, someone who's not white as a white woman, but female obviously and I started as an adjunct in I want to say 2003 2004 it's been a while, and you folks will simply have to trust that the time I looked very young. And so I'm sort of used to it that the concept of you might have to earn the respect of your students because you don't come in as the sort of older white male professor that they expect those folks have maybe some unearned authority in the law school classroom, historically. Well, it does I think happen to be the case that as a female law professor, you can end up with the similar unearned trust around topics like sexual assault. And so I don't want to make light of that many way but I think any professor who's built trust with their students over the course of the semester and that's part of why I segment the materials to the end of the semester. If you have the trust of your students and the students trust each other. That is about as difficult of the classroom conversations as I've had, and it is still easier once you've built those trusting relationships. What is often different about those materials is it's an area of law where the law has changed a lot in recent years. And so you can talk to the students and show the students how that's true, which gives them a sense of empowerment about well, if I think the law could be different. I could change it right because this is an area of law that's in flux. And also I find that a lot of students really want to engage in these materials around whether or not criminal law is an appropriate vehicle for addressing sexual assault, or any harms in the first place. So part of what I think is really different about those cost discussions is I have and I don't want to necessarily suggest it's only female students, but I have a lot of students who come from university backgrounds, where they've been really active around sexual assault issues, because they do on college campuses, obviously, as well as out in the real world. So these are folks who have really thought deeply about these issues and maybe seen how good administrations are how good law is at handling what are genuine social harms, and they have ideas about what should happen instead. So I find those students really, I don't want to say enjoy, I don't think anyone enjoys studying those materials, but really appreciate an opportunity to engage in a different way than maybe they do, if we're talking about larceny, which people are not necessarily have been involved in campus groups to try to think about how better can we deal with the social problem. And so I found getting students involved in thinking about what the law could be what the solutions to something could be is really empowering for a lot of students and makes for really great conversations. Kaylee I imagine this concept is not unique to criminal law from your perspective as someone who teaches property specifically. Have you seen this phenomenon when it comes to topics or cases you choose to teach. So I, in property law, I have written a textbook called integrating spaces, and we're going into our second edition which looks at the impact of race and our second edition will also begin to address gender disability, sexual orientation and other types of social identities. And I don't teach from my textbook in my property law class. And quite frankly, I found that it wasn't a very safe space to have those kind of conversations initially, particularly when I was a younger professor. Over time I've changed that I think two things have changed my students have changed right my students are much more willing to have that set of conversations in 2021 than they were in 2004. And I have actually had students come up to me in my property law class that are like why don't you teach from your textbook and I'm sort of like, I spent most of my career in sort of hiding from that identity I call it my Batman identity because a lot of my students didn't even know I had it. And I think one L classes. It took a long time for me to begin to teach race, and other types of issues in my one L class, because students felt deeply uncomfortable with the discussion, and they weren't always open to having that set of conversations. And that's actually when I started to frame my classes much more aggressively in the first couple of days. So students had an expectation that they would have that set of conversations. And it's also when I started my small groups that sort of spin off from the main class, where students can come once a week and talk to me about anything, because I realized in order for that me to have conversations that are difficult. I had to have trust I think Deborah and I both have talked about how to build trust in the student population and the, the basic case method does not build trust I mean it builds fear right that's one of its primary characteristics. And so you have to really spend a lot of time with students to get them to understand that they can trust you to have those conversations, and that you trust them to have those conversations. And that's what I meant by building resiliency that there has to be trust. Before you ask people to be brave and space, you know, and safe. And so I, it took me a long time now what I have discovered teaching race is that conversations about in particular slavery can be very difficult. And this is when students feel most uncomfortable, because they don't want in many ways to grasp how intertwined slavery is to understanding private law subjects like property contracts and torts, and that very often there are very early cases in the property law curriculum that can't really be understood without that fundamental understanding the second set of cases that can be very difficult are the cases that address the ongoing dispossession of Native Americans in this country, and the ways in which that that dispossession is both in the past and always ongoing in the present. And so, I think when I teach property law. Again, and those those cases actually typically occur pretty early in the curriculum right Johnson versus McIntosh and the antelope if you're addressing slavery, both occur in possession or dispossession, which is very often the first subject that we address. And I've also noticed like I teach again trust in the States, there are very fraught discussions about personhood I call them the pet trust cases, where initially it's just like this very cute idea where oh pets don't have legal personality but I'm like but what happened when people didn't have legal legal personality. And from a lot of my students. That is a moment where they become like deeply deeply concerned about their implications of the doctrine that they're learning. And so, it is I think a teaching struggle and for me I had to explicitly understand it as a teaching structure, and I had to spend a lot of time building a scaffold with students before I felt comfortable as a teacher having those discussions. Thank you. Um, one of the discussions I've had with my co professors and with Gabby is the idea of when and how to be vulnerable in the classroom. I mean like, I think that vulnerability is the value that is missing from legal education. But and I very much lead with vulnerability and I share my identity and my perspective, because I feel like it was erased in the law school classroom and in the practice of law my identity, especially as a female was erased. Can you talk and any, any of you can answer this about how much of your identity you share with students and how or if you think it helps create space for minoritized marginalized or other students in the classroom. I mean I guess I can answer that question Nicole and this was a very fraught discussion about me as a professor in the legal profession. Early in my career, I, because of the ways in which I was silenced, attempted, I think a vulnerable persona in the classroom. And I stopped. It was like, one of the most brutal and searing experiences I've had as a person. I don't think my students were ready to to embrace me in a vulnerable position. And it was not only my students, my white students it was also very often my students of color, they wanted me in a certain way to engage in a performance of strength. And so, and also I would say my female students as well. And so I stopped, because you know I think asking somebody and the more I think about it I think a lot about what Naomi Osaka said, when she said I'm depressed. And that I'm withdrawing from tennis turning asking someone and then I think a lot about Serena and Venus's reaction which is like well we had to deal with this and we didn't really, we're going to keep on going. And I think a lot about that because I think both of them are right right and it becomes a set of choices that can be very difficult for people of color. And so I began very explicitly talking about that with my students of color. And like because I, what I learned from that experience was that as a lawyer of color, you're managing your persona throughout your career. And like it has to be an explicit conversation. And I think I mentioned that in my article that part of building resilient lawyers is actually saying to them, this is something that you're going to have to manage throughout your career. You're not going to expect you to be the lawyer that walks into the jury room, people may mistake you for being a legal secretary. There is always the play and you actually might be the first in your organization. And there's going to be a lot of pressure on you to manage your persona. And so the question of vulnerability for me was a really fraught one in my career and I definitely rent there's a really great article by Adrian Davis and Robert Chang, where they talk about how you have to perform right and how to create a persona as a professor that I found very helpful to me because they said that at a certain point you have to be self protective, and that, you know, and they they analogize it to like Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald or jazz singers having to go into the American South and having to perform a self right. And so I think, you know, I would say to you, Nicole, like, it's not a requirement necessarily that you be vulnerable, because it also allows you in many to be heard. And that's not something that I necessarily think that law school classrooms should necessarily engage in asking young women and asking scholars of color to be vulnerable in ways that are harmful to them that hurt them, right, and act as we are not people to so like I have actually turned more towards the idea that what we should ask younger scholars and scholars of color to be is to be self protective, and to be cautious about their persona in the classroom, and I would say the same thing to my students of color, they don't, and I always have to say to students, you don't have to be brave every day, right, you can be self protective of your energy of your time. And when you place a vulnerable and authentic persona in front of other people that can judge you in harmful ways. That's not necessarily a responsibility of your job as a law professor. And what I would say is, I do think that there's a difference between being vulnerable and being accessible, right, and part of what we do as professors is to to some extent model professionalism for students, and that there are ways that it's appropriate for us to connect with students and a lot of those ways are ways that when I was a young professor I was very uncomfortable with I did feel this kind of pressure to be something different than who I am. I think that I am generally a very approachable person, but I felt like I needed to be kind of a bot in front of the classroom, because that was how I was going to get authority in that space. And so, as I've become older and tenured, it's been easier for me to be accessible but I'm accessible along the lines where I'm comfortable talking. So I am accessible to students in that I will say I am a first generation college student and so if some of this landscape is unfamiliar with you to you that's something I can talk to you about right, whereas I don't necessarily share my family situation or other things that I don't really think are kind of axes that my students and I need to connect on. And so I do think that being accessible so that students do feel like they can talk to you they feel like they can trust you is really important. But I do think that part of that is having boundaries around, as Kelly has said, around what you are going to present as part of your persona and what you're going to allow other people to access and that's true of your colleagues, true of your students and I think is something that's appropriate for your students to learn as well from you. Thanks. So one of the concerns about creating this space in the classroom is that it may increase the number and magnitude of difficult conversations. How do you manage and this is to Kaylee and Doug, how do you manage these conversations and also manage the amount of material you need to cover in a semester. One of the criticisms that we've heard of integrating diversity skills and conversations into the first year doctrinal classroom is that there's too much doctrine to cover and not enough time or room to add one more thing. Obviously I disagree with this, but I also don't teach a one L doctrinal class. So can you discuss how you achieve this like effective balance between integrating these conversations and these skills, and also covering what you need to cover. So, I, again, it takes a lot of extra work on the part of the professor, I'm going to be honest. So for what I teach a one out course, I have every week a small conversation I call coffee clatches during the quarantine it became quarantine happy hour. And so it's usually at half an hour to 40 minutes and students can come in and talk to me and they can talk to me about every issue. And sometimes they will talk to me about the kinds of conversations that we had in class when I realized in property law. I was having a real dynamic in my class between students who get really excited about property law and students who are not excited about property law. And so I had to learn how to manage that and so I definitely have to have that small section for every one of my classes so that's more work. And I do really try to integrate, like the doctrinal technique into the classroom again, equality values mean equality methods. And the thing that has helped me the most and I think it's helped my students the most is the written hypothetical, where instead of having students answer the hypothetical in class, I get up and make them come up into the front of the class, and I had them write out like what their answer would be. And for me, it's really important to have the written hypothetical because the exam's written, and students actually have to get used to thinking about the rule in the context of writing it out. Right. And so that has, like so for a lot of my hypotheticals now, I don't have the Q&A, I have everybody stop, I have them write an index card, I have the people on call go up and write out the answer and talk about the answer. And I actually think that has worked. It's the same time in the classroom, but it shifts the dynamic and also I think very important for me, and I thought about this a lot in connection with integrating spaces. It creates empowerment in the students, they're leaving the discussion, they're having me guide them right as a mentor, but I'm not judging them. I'm not saying this is a bad thing or not a bad thing. It's helping them think through the problem in a sustained way. And so for me, it's actually thinking about what type of techniques can happen in the same time, but I do definitely have to say when you lead difficult conversations, when you are managing those types of conversations, it does take more time and investment, right, by the professor, and I always say that is not necessarily my problem to solve as the professor. That means my institution has got to get better about learning how the value that kind of teaching and rewarding that type of teaching, and how they assess teaching performance. That's not my responsibility to shift that dynamic. And I think it's right, it's just, it's work is what it is. But from my perspective, just to answer the question of trading off, if the students are not connecting with your teaching and are connecting with what's going on in the classroom, they're not learning how to interact. And so from my perspective, making sure that dealing with diversity is a pervasive issue. I'm lucky that I teach criminal law where I think you would have to actively duck to avoid talking about a lot of the issues that we sometimes talk about trading off and doctrinal classroom. But I feel like those are things that have to be pervasive throughout your curriculum, or a lot of students are going to check out in the first place, I have found that bringing in current events can both make conversations somewhat but brought this also an accessible entry point for students because they're often already following cases in the press or listening to podcasts, and that bringing those things into the classroom is kind of a not as much work for the professor way to get students to have those conversations around some difficult issues. I loved that your, your essay talked so much about podcasts as someone who is addicted to podcasts and use them in my classes. It was like just really exciting to me to hear that other people are doing this and this is all way into these difficult discussions. My final question is for you Gabby and I'm sorry because it is a hard one. So, a bunch of law professors are on this webinar and we'll are all turning to you. What is a good place to start to create space for all students in the classroom. Yeah, that is a hard question. I think it's as easy as addressing whatever the elephant might be with a case, because I think for me it's, I try not to do this very often but it's easy for me to dismiss what's being like taught to me when I think like, oh well obviously this is about this. Like that's, that's what the issue is. And I am, and I'm all for the procedural part, I understand that we have to learn black letter law, we have to know the rule, we have to, you know, but the policies also really important. And I, and as somebody that likes to write. For me the policies what is what gets me to the position to, you know, right. It's those little issues and I think that when we start to disregard. Like, identity and fact patterns. It discourages students that might even share those identity, and whichever one of those identity factors it is. I'm feeling like they have a place in that conversation. And that's not to say that the class should, you know, talk about it for 10 minutes but I had one of my sales professors like, we were talking about this furniture case that we talked about in contracts where you know there's a mom that I think she rented like a something. And then they sued her for not paying, but the policy behind that or I guess what was really going on was, you know, this was a single mom. She had like five kids. She was also black. And it's like the 80s interest rates were ridiculous. And I think the, the factors that I wanted to know the first time I read the case and, and I thought that it was, I never expected sales to be the class where the professor was like here's what was going on. And, you know, here was the motivation behind the interest rate and here was her, you know, maybe this was her motivation behind not being able to pay. I think it was just as important to the conversation as the law was. And then that led me to looking into it. So I think that, you know, it might seem like it doesn't. It's not relevant to the law that we're learning but I think those little things are what would drive student engagement. And I think student engagement is what our learning should be about. For me at like that's, I want to be involved in the classroom. But I also want my professors to want me to be involved in the classroom. So I think that's as far as I'll go. I think that that was that you made some really great points that I hope that we can all take away from this. And I don't think that there's like a meaningful separation between the law and the people with their identities. I think that that's like this construct that gets perpetrated in law school but I don't think it's real. I think the judge, the legislators, the people involved in the lawsuit, they're all people with identities. There's no separating that from the law. We are all the law. So this concludes our discussion today. It's been the third of five planned sessions over this academic year, which are being co sponsored by Roger Williams law CUNY law and jurist. Our next event is planned for February of 2022. Thank you so much to our speakers who not only contributed to our book but who showed up here. I have never met most of them in person and it is such a so weird but also such a delight to be able to do this. Your point of view is why the book exists and is successful because you all have so much to share and I'm just so we all are I can speak for all the editors are just so grateful that you're just willing to share it over and over and over again. And so thank you to our institutions for hosting this. Thank you to all of our attendees. And we will see you in February 2022. Thank you.