 Hello everyone, and welcome to Roger Williams University's event today on integrating doctrine and diversity. We're so pleased that you could join us. My name is Gregory Bowman, and I have the deep honor and privilege of serving as the Dean of this fine law school of Roger Williams University. And I want to start us today by reading our land and labor and all of them. Let's take a moment as we start to reflect on the lands on which we reside. We are coming from many places today and we want to acknowledge the ancestral homelands and traditional territories of indigenous and native peoples who have been here since time and memorial. 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 Pokanoka people as well as Soems, the original name of the land on which our campus resides. We also acknowledge that this country would not exist, but we're not for the free enslaved labor of black people. And we recognize that the town of Bristol, the very land on which the campus resides, is significantly the creative enslaved people from Africa. The economy of New England, Rhode Island, and more specifically Bristol was built from wealth generated to the tribal trade of human lives. During this time of ongoing national reckoning with our history of slavery and the disparate treatment of black people, we honor the legacy of the African diaspora and the black lives, knowledge and skills stolen due to violence and white supremacy. As we gather here today online, the movement for justice and liberation is building in our country and we are witnessing the power of the people. Yet many are still being met with violence and even being killed, while others actively work to stand in the way of progress. As upholders of justice, our hope is to become agents of change for members of our society who have been met with violence, physical, mental, emotional, through our privilege. And as upholders of justice, we believe that our students who soon will be practitioners of law can be an already barred agents of change as well. Thank you again for joining us and I hope you enjoy today's program and find it instructional and formal. Thanks, Greg. What you don't see is the craziness of tech issues behind the scenes. So welcome everybody. I just want to take a big deep breath and send some calming thoughts to our speakers who are probably as stressed out as I am about things not going exactly perfect. But good afternoon or morning, depending on where you are, welcome to the third of our, the third event of our third year of integrating doctrine and diversity speaker series. I'm Nicole, moderator of today's session titled Beyond the Casebook DEIB and supplementary materials. Thank you to our sponsors, RW Law, CUNY Law, Jurist, Berkeley Law, and GW Law. To start, I want to quote two of our speakers today, Anamika and Danielle. This quote really inspired me to put this event together and I wanted to share it to help set our intention. Quote, it is not enough to be non-racist. Faculty must make their courses and curriculum actively anti-racist. This requires a decolonizing pedagogy that lifts those who have been oppressed. Many have already begun this work. However, it is high time for us to reach a critical mass. Students of all backgrounds benefit from ethical and inclusive teaching. Collectively, we must provide students with an honest representation of knowledge to feel and push towards a just society. Students deserve the opportunity to think critically about the world around them. And as faculty, our job is to give them the tools they need to make the world a better place. This topic was further developed after conversations with several law professors at different institutions who all presented me with a pretty similar dilemma. Professors have said to me, generally speaking, they like their casebooks enough. They feel like their casebooks do a good job and they're used to using a casebook. They like how they're organized-ish. They like the topics they cover for the most part. They greatly respect their casebook editors, but they don't feel like there is enough breadth of coverage on diversity, equity, equality, and social justice issues. As such, professors, these professors who I spoke with are open to creating or using content from beyond the casebook, but are looking for advice on how to develop this content, how to select the content, and how to use the content as assignments or in class. Today, we have two law professor panelists that have worked to creatively supplement their casebooks. We also have two criminology professors who will present an anti-racist and decolonized teaching and learning framework to employ when considering adding materials beyond your casebook. To begin, please meet Deb and Tong. Deb is the Vice Dean for Intellectual Life and Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Tong is a professor of law at Lewis and Clark Law School. Just as sort of an introductory matter, do you find this to be a relatable problem? Can you share your thoughts on the subject matter of casebooks generally? What are your perspective about how well casebook editors integrate DEIB skills and content? Do you want to give a shout out to a casebook you particularly like? And I guess, have you seen things change over time? Deb, if you want to go first, and then Tong. So I have been teaching, I think at this point, I don't want to do the math. I'm a lawyer, right? But I think about 17 years. And what I would say is everything that Nicole said was very relatable to me, which is I teach all law school and always have taught at law schools, where it's important to make sure that the students get the content that they need in order to pass the bar. And so as a general matter, I've found casebooks to be pretty helpful in delivering that information to students in a way that is easy for them to digest and that the organization makes sense. And over the time that I've been teaching, even out of some of the same textbooks as they have updated editions, I've noticed that casebook authors have gotten much better about integrating DEI materials into the casebooks and have been really appreciative of the fact that they've done so. My perspective, and this is something that I think we'll get back to is that I think they've done a really great job of doing that. The problem often is that what we're teaching are cases and rules that themselves are not particularly great in terms of their DEI coverage. And that's not the casebook authors fault. That's just where we're kind of sending the focus of the students. And so even if you include a lot of really wonderful excerpts from Law Review articles and other DEI materials that I think that casebook authors have gotten much better about including. The students still kind of gravitate towards the cases, and that's kind of a reality of using casebooks. And so that's something that I've observed. Casebooks have gotten much better, but it still takes a lot of effort to make sure that you're getting the coverage of DEI issues that you would like. Deb, before Tom jumps in, could you tell us what classes you typically teach with with what with casebooks? I teach the three classes I pretty much teach every single year are our first year criminal law class, you know, the introductory criminal law class, criminal procedure, investigative. So the fourth, fifth and sixth amendment materials and evidence. So those are the three classes I pretty much always teach. I occasionally teach some other courses, but that's that's really my portfolio. Thank you. Sorry, Tom. No worries. So I actually teach more or less the same classes that Deb does. I do not teach substantive criminal law. We require Chrome Pro as our first year course and also teach the bailed jail class, which is Chrome Pro too. So casebooks. I remember a former colleague of mine actually wrote a short law review article reviewing criminal procedure casebooks back in the early 2000s and noted that back then there was already a shift from the older style of just simply here are the cases to some newer books that were integrating a lot more. They didn't think it was DEI at the time, but much more real world information, particularly about race class. Social issues. And so I've stuck with one of those books, which is Alan Hoffman comprehensive criminal procedures. It's a gigantic book. But I've had students say that they actually have kept it on their shelves and have referred to it the ones who've gone into criminal practice. And what I think it does well, at least as far as casebooks can do is there are the citations of our view articles, but there are actual discussions sometimes of statistics or some acknowledgement of race or acknowledgement that the Supreme Court has not discussed race, even though it might seem relevant in particular opinions. It's striking that in talking about Terry versus Ohio, the stock and frisk case that the casebook actually points out that this is one of the very rare occasions where the Supreme Court, in a case that ostensibly does not present a discrimination issues still notes social unjust unrest and race issues, but it also notes it's only one bare footnote you have to kind of like not blank or you'll miss it. So I, you know, I think that if you look, there are casebooks, at least in the criminal area that do sort of cover this this area in fact in teaching any kind of criminal course I think it's impossible not to be talking about race and gender and class. And it's almost pedagogical malpractice not to look into it. Did you say pedagogical malpractice. Yes. That's the best thing I ever heard I'm going to start up holding professors accountable for pedagogical malpractice. My next question is for Deb. Deb is a contributor to our integrating doctrine and diversity series with essays in volume one and the soon to be published in the next four to six weeks volume two. In your essay in our first volume you start your your writing with all hail the podcast. And you talk about how students come to your class, more aware of substantive criminal law issues because of podcasts and documentaries. And you discuss how you use a variety of media and exercises beyond your casebook to infuse your class with a diversity of voices and perspectives. In your second essay, you wrote students appreciate the opportunity to explore evidence concepts through outside media and podcasts, and some excellent podcasts have given us episodes centered on evidence and diversity. So could you share examples of where you do this work when it has been effective, like, and really like try to inspire us to use these podcasts or documentaries. Yeah, so, and I will also be clear, I've also generated a lot of my own material one of the things that I do is I script a lot of things for my students, both because it allows me to bring some things into the classroom that otherwise wouldn't be there and also because it gets the students to be able to participate in a way that's kind of low pressure look I'm just reading out loud from script right I'm not having to necessarily participate in ways that might be more vulnerable but in terms of the kinds of already existing outside media that I've used. One of the things that I used in both my criminal procedure and criminal law class is season two of in the dark, the podcast is all about the Curtis flowers case, which many of you are probably familiar with this was a case that after the podcast aired ended up being granted by the Supreme Court there was actually Justice Thomas dissent that said I can't believe we're doing this because of a podcast which I don't think was particularly fair. But it one of the great things about that podcast is it really takes you episode by episode through all the things that went wrong in that particular case, focusing on the thread throughout that this is a case happening in Mississippi with a black defendant with some white victims, and all of the things that are going wrong, in part because of those racial dynamics explains things like Batson, and I found some students come into class already having listened to the podcast, but particular episodes of that I found have been really helpful for students in, you know, hearing about this in the context of a real case and how things might play out. A couple of other things that I've also found really helpful serial in their third season followed misdemeanor court, which is something that I think is not particularly well covered by casebooks. At all we think a lot about in criminal law, and even criminal procedure felony cases serious cases, and that entire third season is about misdemeanor court, and it also has a really great excerpt I always playing class of a prosecutor making decisions about how to take a particular case to the grand jury and, and describing the facts of that case. And it is a case that's really great for students to follow if they're trying to figure out how all of the discretionary decisions get made in criminal justice so I found that one to be helpful to And finally, and this is going to sound kind of counterintuitive, I've been using the dropout, which is the podcast about the Elizabeth Holmes case. And by the reason we talk about that case is because you have an affluent white well educated defendant which is absolutely not representative, obviously, of who normally gets criminally prosecuted. I think it's great for students to be able to have a conversation about well what happens. That's different, right when you have someone who's well resource to has media outlets, who has everything that they could possibly have at their disposal. What goes differently with their criminal trial process. And so those are some of the sources that I found really helpful. And then a couple of documentaries that I often use I often use murder on a Sunday morning, which is a case about a black teenager in Florida who was wrongfully accused of murdering a tourist and follows his trial, and how it is that he ended up being acquitted. And again, focuses in part on the race issues in that case, also on the class issues in that case. And a lot of the other things that can go wrong in your criminal process, such that you end up being wrongfully accused and tried for murder. So lots of great material out there. And certainly you can always take a look at my book chapters I listen, I list a lot of other materials that I use. Thanks. I am a huge true crime fan. So like I go to sleep at night, listening to very unsettling podcasts. And I get really inspired. I, for those of you who are law librarians, I watched the ESPN 30 for 30 fantastic lies about the Duke lacrosse case. And the attorney is talking about how he taught himself about DNA evidence. And like says, like, I ordered a book and I learned how to do it. It was this amazing moment where you could see someone talking about how they do legal research in real life. But I thought was fantastic. And I thought like this is exactly what I want someone to say for like before I show the one else what to do. Like this is real this happens. Whenever I teach mass incarceration or when we teach mass incarceration in our race class, we use the Netflix documentary 13, which is available for they've made it available for free on YouTube. I also really like the podcast seeing white. And so I also find like the use of documentaries and podcasts to be something that the students can, you know, listen to while they're running or commuting, and they seem to get really engaged beyond the ways that I see them engage sometimes in other types of material. My next question is for tongue tongue wrote an essay in our second volume about Chrome pro. In his essay he writes about using images and videos and his teaching saying more can be done in the classroom to take advantage of audio visual technology and the ready availability on the internet of photographs and videos. Tom, can you share some examples of how you have developed this pedagogical technique and give some examples of when you pivot to this in class and why you think it's an effective strategy for integrating the issues into your classroom. Yeah, sure. So let's start with the last question. Why is it effective. We know that students have different learning styles, and some students are visual learners or video audio learners. And for those students, that's more difficult to process simply through reading the cases. And so there's some advantage to video and pictures, not simply di, but in other areas as well, but focusing on di. I'll give you three examples. So when I first started teaching Chrome pro one, which is the investigation course, I would want the students to just see how the fourth amendment affects us in our everyday lives. So I would ask, okay, who's been pulled over for traffic stop and almost everybody raised their hand and I thought, naively at the time that, oh, well, you know, this shows a relatively innocuous way in which the fourth amendment touches all of us. But of course, it's innocuous for many of us, but not all of us. And the challenge for me, let's say, so I'm an Asian American guy, I don't, I won't ever really be able to process what it's like to be pulled over driving while black. I can read an essay on it and I can think intellectually, you know, this is wrong. This is awful, but I can't really viscerally feel it. So I found a video online of a traffic stop and it's a fairly typical story from the start on the highway. It's a dash cam from the the state trooper pulls over you haul truck and the trooper gets out walks over to the truck, the driver and and says, you know, can you step out please which is already a little bit unusual and the driver is a young black man. And it turns out he's a law student and this was right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. And so the schools shut down, he was driving home for remote learning. And so I show this and the students I think are thinking, okay, well, this is just like any traffic stop. And I actually do this in real time. So the very first class after I go through the beginning of the course materials introduction so on, I say, okay, you know, who's been pulled over traffic stop and then I start the video. And then after the beginning part where the driver is talking to the officer, I say, okay, well, we'll come back to this and I go over some more course material and about half an hour later into the course, I go back to the video. And I sort of fast forward 30 minutes so real time and the stop is still going on, which is never I've never had a stop go that long. And at 30 minute mark, the officer actually has the black students out and by the way he's on the phone with his dad the whole time and his dad actually as a judge. And he's narrating what's going on because he wants there to be a witness to what's happening which again is something that I've never felt the need to have done and I suspect for many of my students as well and to just see that this is what's going on I think is eye opening. And at the 30 minute mark the trooper starts to arrest the driver. You know, he tells him book it put your hands on the hood of the police car lean forward and then he puts his hands behind his back and, and the driver starts getting quite agitated and starts yelling to his daddy daddy's arresting me. And then he starts whaling I don't want to die. And the trooper dismissively says, and you're not going to die. You know, clearly there's difference in perception here in power dynamics and the, the drivers put into backseat the car so I say okay well I know let's go back to some course material. And an hour into the course I come back to the video and now Fido the drug sniffing dog is out there checking into the the back of the U-Haul truck apparently Fido has picked up on some traces of cocaine or something which could be three or four drivers ago who knows what but our classes run an hour 25 minutes per session and the video actually is longer than an hour 25 minutes so the end of the first class I say okay I have to fast forward to the end. In the end the driver he just gets a warning and so you know you might chalk this up and say well he didn't even get a ticket no harm no foul but clearly it's a much different experience than I've ever had and that I suspect nearly all of my students and so I think it's a good way to demonstrate in a very visceral sense. Some of the issues that we're going to be talking about in the fourth amendment in the way that the race and perception of race kicks in that is much more traumatic than you would get from reading on paper so that's one example. Another one is there's a case that I teach called Darden which is a prosecutorial misconduct case in the closing argument of the aggravated murder case the prosecutor made some inflammatory remarks along the lines of pointing the defendant. You know this is a brutal crime this animal shouldn't be out of the cell without a leash around his neck. And that more comments about animals and so on. And you know this might be just a prosecutor going out of control just really demonizing the opponent but what I when I get to this court. Case in class I have a slide and it's the booking photo of the defendant I try to avoid booking photos is but sometimes that's the only photo you can find. And he's a very dark skinned black man and when you see that and you think about the language of an animal and particularly the leash around the neck. It triggers for me and this dates me but there's the old roots miniseries where LeVar Burton is playing the slave. And the promo photos have very prominently he's got a chain around his neck and so I just can't help but see that image when I think about that inflammatory arguments and the opinion doesn't say anything about race and again it's not a race issue to doctrinally but I don't see how you could avoid mentioning it and in fact the opinion doesn't even tell you Darden's race at all. There's one mention in the entire opinion about race which is the perpetrator which you might infer. Oh well that must be Darden but but the fact that the Supreme Court isn't even commenting on this. Maybe one thing if they were to comment and say but we don't think that this rises to the level of reversible error but to ignore it completely. I think it's fairly outrageous. And the third example I'll give is the cases involving consent to search police officers. You might by looking in your bag and the person says okay officer I guess that's okay and the officer looks in they find drugs. Is the consent valid or was the person in a position where they felt like they had to and the standard for it is what a reasonable person in this position feel free to walk away or at least end the encounter with the police. So what is the reasonable person is the reasonable person is an encompassed race doesn't encompass gender doesn't encompass class. So what I do is I show a video from a crime drama but it's a it's a Chinese crime drama because in my spare time I try to work on improving my management so I watched just all these Chinese shows. And so the setup is fairly standard we've got two police officers one suspect but the entire conversations in Mandarin and there are subtitles but subtitles are imperfect and you miss a lot of the tonal cues that we would pick up on. In a normal conversation which we are fluent in the language and the top of it Mandarin is particularly useful for this because it's a tonal language so there are four different tones. For the same sound and those are all different words and so not only do you have to be picking up the tones of just the social queue language but you actually would also have to be. picking up the tones about which particular word so I think it completely flabbergast students except for that I did have one students last semester who I said does every speak Mandarin one student raised her hand I said OK well this won't work for you but for everyone else. If it's so alien to them then think about what it's like for a non native English speaker who's in the interrogation scene and we're trying to process whether we think this person's consent is reasonable based on our assumptions of somebody who's. natively fluent in English and so it sort of highlights that particular problem. I think any foreign language of work although Spanish obviously you would most likely have a number of students who would be conversational or fluent enough in Spanish that it might lose some of the effect. But. Anyway that would be that's a third example of how I think you can use videos to sort of really demonstrate the limits and then maybe weaknesses or problems with the way the doctrine is handled. Thanks I will be Googling Polish crime dramas when we're done. This next question is for both of you. What are the reactions from students been to your inclusion of the supplementary material whether it's assigned or whether it's in the classroom. Deb why don't you go first. Yeah I mean I don't think it's just because they got a break from listening to me and from having to speak themselves but I mean I don't think that I've ever gotten anything other than incredibly positive feedback I just came before doing this from showing my cousin Vinny in my evidence class which I realize a lot of people know to do that. But I came back to a whole bunch of emails from my students saying oh yeah here's another thought I had about the impeachment that I saw in that movie and it's students I don't normally hear from. And part of what I really like about showing videos or having podcasts or using other kinds of media is that certainly the students do get a perspective they might not otherwise get and engage and understand material in ways that they might not otherwise. But I also hear from different students and I think it's partly because if you are reading cases in your casebook and you're like oh this is the answer I need to get to and maybe my perspective is wrong on this. I think that you kind of feel like I only have one path whereas if you are looking at media. If you're watching true crime I have had I don't know how many conversations with students who once they see I'm true crime friendly and it will you just show that in class as an actual pedagogical tool. I've been here in my office and have all sorts of questions about the Murdoch trial for example that reflect that they're really you know trying to apply what they're learning to the material and again it's not the students I normally necessarily hear from. And so I think that it's positive both for student understanding and for getting them into a position where they can see things they might not otherwise see. I love the thought about showing foreign crime dramas I actually did something fairly recently where I showed a tick tock of somebody who had recorded their encounter with a police officer and I don't feel bad about doing that because you're posting this to social media presumably like to get it out there where sometimes some of the material I feel are maybe a little more exploitative. But yeah I think it's great for student understanding and also great for just igniting students who otherwise might not feel comfortable participating might not feel comfortable coming to me and talking to me about things they're interested in so at least from my perspective nothing but good vibes. I have some questions about what's going on in South Carolina but more from like a sociological what is going on in South Carolina. I find that the use of like some of the true crime stuff is really humanizing because this is the this is something that kind of led them to law school and this is something that's like normal to them like media is normal to them. And especially in the first year so much of what they read in their case books is foreign and they're trying to figure out their professional identity and how much of their professional identity they need to leave behind and this brings something human something recognizable into the classroom and that sounds to me really affirming. Tom what have been the feedback from your students. I would say mostly the same as Deb's reaction. I've had students who've sent me suggestions for videos and things to show as well but but I did have one student who that the highway stopped video that I mentioned that was disturbing enough to her that she decided that criminal practice was not for her. But on the other hand I think that's good to find that out very early on in law school if that really is the case so. But otherwise you know it in the comments and student evaluations the ones who do comment seem to like it. There are ones who sent me emails one student on the opposite reaction from the highway stop sent me an email after that first day of class. Will we be getting more videos like this in class so in general I think it's been very positive feedback. This is something we talk a lot about in our race and the foundations of American law class because the images specifically interactions with the police but also images of those who have been incarcerated or enslaved. Are so graphic and upsetting. It's like really balancing pedagogically is this going to be so traumatic that we set the students back versus is this going to be able to have them connect with material in a different way. And I think it's hard and I think it isn't there isn't one answer for everybody. But I guess I would agree like if seeing the realities of the type of law puts you off to that then maybe it's better you figure that out sooner rather than later. So either way maybe it's instructive. Thanks tongue and Deb I will you'll be back after we talk our next after our next segment. So I'm going to shift my focus a bit from professors who are successfully doing the work of integrating the content into their classes. And I'm going to introduce two professors who may be able to contextualize this further and share a framework to consider for making future changes to your classes. Anamika Twiman Ghoshal is a senior lecturer of criminology at Brunel University London. Danielle Karkin-Lakaraza is an associate professor of criminology at Stone Hill College. Thank you both for joining us in the legal ed realm today. We're so happy to have you. One of the practices that I engage with before I start prepping my syllabus for the semester is an audit of my assigned readings and materials. I was looking for some sources about how to audit your materials to share with others when I stumbled upon a blog post by Danielle and Anamika. And more again, can you please share the link in the chat auditing your assigned materials or in their words completing a self assessment of your assigned materials is one of the parts of a framework they developed. Can you please talk about the purpose of your framework and take us through the five key areas of action? Sure, I'll get started. So thanks so much for inviting us. It's great to come in in another discipline. So as you just mentioned, we're both criminologists. So it's really good to be here and great to hear about the work of Deb and Tong that they do in their lectures and their courses. So when Danielle and I began working on this decolonizing framework, I think when we were we were really looking at the aims as being beyond just diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. The idea here is that this diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging is often used really as a pan seer for deeper epistemic problems in academia. And that's what we were really trying to challenge. Which is why this isn't just about anti racism, but also about decolonization. So it's a much larger endeavor here. And what we want to do is wanted to do is read to identify that the problems in academia stem from a legacy of colonization that endures to this day. So as we mentioned in the framework, this begins with self work, which we outlined, but also acknowledging the complicity of our discipline. So for us, that was particularly criminology and looking how power imbalances and injustices remain and are maintained within our disciplines. And criminology has a problematic legacy and so does law. And so if our disciplines are complicit in an unequal world, then we as academics have a responsibility to change that. And as Greg mentioned at the very opening, you know, it's about becoming agents of change. And if we really want to teach the next generation to become agents of change, well, then we need to give them and empower them to do that. And so we try to come up with some suggestions on how exactly to do that. And really we believe that this is a lot more than just tinkering on the edges, but actually doing something much deeper. And so we talk to start off with two key components. The first one is intellectual reflexivity. And so what that really means is analyzing the historical and social structures that have conditioned the way we think. Each person has been conditioned to think in a certain way by the institutions, by academia, by our disciplines. And so it's really about asking yourself, you know, how has what you've been taught then gets reflected into how and what you teach. So how do you pass this on and the use particularly and replication of what you've been taught in many ways belies the function of law, which is to provide justice. And I think that the more we get embedded in just regurgitating the same practices, we actually are not making the changes that we as academics really would like to see. So really thinking about things like how is law presented, what are the sources of law, what legal traditions are being presented. So I mean, are indigenous legal traditions being taught? Are they being mentioned? Are these assumptions that indigenous legal traditions didn't exist? Are they being challenged? These are all things that require to be part of a larger curricular thinking. The second part is the anti-racist recall where you really acknowledge the role of race and society and that your identity, your location, your experience, all of that frames reality. And now what's really important about that is to move away from these assumptions and this very problematic connection between race and crime. I think we really need to move away from that, you know, just saying, well, you know, let's talk about race and criminal law. Well, just by making that statement, you are already suggesting that there is a connection between race and crime and these traps are out there and we have to be very conscious of that. And so we are all affected by these racist ideas. That's true for your students. That's true for us as individuals who are teaching them. It's also true for judges and lawyers and therefore the case books that we use and the cases that we present to them. So just to go very briefly over this framework as we created it is, you know, as I mentioned, the first thing is about acknowledging your own bias. There are a lot of biases and privileges and talking about, you know, that race doesn't just need to be covered in a criminal law course, but it actually needs to be covered across the whole curriculum. We talk about revising courses and curricula. So that really means what Shiva Svatna talks about in terms of cognitive justice that we're really talking about diversity of knowledges and equality of knowers. We've got a really long way to get there. So, you know, we need to make sure that we're decentering Western knowledge. And if you think about kind of legal traditions that very much centers Western legal traditions. So, you know, what are the other legal traditions, identify them, identify what the emissions are, make sure that students are aware of not just other legal traditions, but also alternative forms of justice. We talk about amplifying minoritized voices. Now, the issue here is that we do not want to do that in a tokenistic way, which doesn't mean you sprinkle a few here and there. And there we go with diversified. And, you know, this is where we get into this problematic area that, well, you know, we've done, we've done a little bit, we've thrown one person of color. And so we've done our jobs, but to also ensure that we have a diversity of voices, stories, experiences. And being very careful about these ideas of assimilation that we intrinsically tend to tend to replicate. I think there's also a cautious tale here to be included around what sort of material include. We've got to be very careful about having the sort of voyeuristic attitude towards black bodies where we look at African Americans as victims. That, you know, that we're constantly replicating the victim, victimization that happens in society by bringing that into the classroom. Really, it's about empowerment and about shifting that narrative away. Danielle will talk about some of the other elements of our framework. Yeah, and so I think what we started talking about, you know, the incorporation of media is certainly helpful as long as we're challenging and questioning what we're seeing. Right, because we know media is, you know, exaggerated and developed in a way to be entertainment. Well, the lives of the individuals who these stories are about are not our entertainment. And so, as Anamika just pointed out, we want to make sure that we are empowering rather than adding to what media already portrays. But some additional ways that we suggest becoming more anti-racist and decolonizing your curriculum is actually developing community partnerships and doing so with local agencies that are supporting the underprivileged, underserved and underfunded folks with an actual intention of providing them with resources, supports they're currently lacking. Rather than, you know, here's a service learning project, go ahead and do it, which then puts the onus on the community partner to try to come up with projects to try to come up with something to keep your students, you know, engaged in the material and the content that they're dealing with. So the goals should also be include enhancing student learning, but done so in a manner that's reciprocal. We really want to help those partners that are actually making a difference in our on the front line of trying to provide justice and equity to those who are underprivileged, underserved and underfunded. Again, I think that one of our ultimate goals from our papers is to ensure that students are getting an opportunity to learn about the world around them, but not just learning about it, learning how what they're doing can improve and leave behind a better world once they've, you know, gone on into their careers. And then high impact learning. We know we talk about, you know, there's exams, there's papers, there's all of these things that we do in the classroom, but how much of it actually has an impact on the ultimate learning of our students. Well, I want to point out that in order for our courses to actually be inclusive. We also have to think about our students in and of themselves right. Is it actually an inclusive classroom if our students can't access the materials that we have. I recently looked up the cost of casebooks. I as a professor wouldn't be able to cover the cost of how many casebooks you all need. So starting from there right considering inclusivity and accessibility by utilizing open access or open source casebooks or utilizing materials that you put together yourself. But if we're going to talk about casebooks and casebooks specifically as a means of DEIB, then we need to think about what cases are within these casebooks right. I've done a bit of research on my own I found common water waddle in 2011, who were talking about the fact that every casebook and I quote from them, every casebook tends to possess its own angle identity or theme fighting for a share in the marketplace of legal education. Because again we create our content for courses with a means of making money right the folks who are supplying the textbooks the publishers, there's an ultimate financial goal. So if you are using these casebooks I'm sure there's good purpose behind it, but as you choose them, make sure you incorporate an assignment or an in class discussion where you ask the questions. Well what court what cases were chosen by these particular authors. What cases could have been chosen instead which ones were being left out. Why were they being left out. What information is missing from the casebook I mean I just heard you guys were speaking about how race was left off and some of the reviews well why question why. I also think it's important that as you incorporate forms of media such as podcasts documentaries videos ticktocks and these casebooks rather than just show them and connect them to the laws at hand. Discuss the how and the why. These things that we're seeing are happening like how is it 2023 and we're still ignoring race as a reason for these stops to be happening this it's 2023. So question how and the why, but also talk about you know what is it within those laws that are allowing them to continue to happen and having the students actively engage in thinking about how to shift the laws so that they the world around us can be more inclusive and more just. So I think you know rather than pointing out that there's bits and pieces and factors that are not being talked about, raise the attention to figure out why they're not being talked about, and then go a step further. How do we resolve it how do we make sure the conversations are actually comprehensive and all inclusive opposed to just the bits and pieces here and there that the authors want us to see. So, I think, ultimately, when you ask the question how can we use casebooks and our courses to make them more inclusive, generate the discussion around the material around the biases that exist how those biases are still able to exist. And question them critique them because what's going to happen, as an Amica pointed out is that when our students go on to become attorneys, what they've learned is what they're going to practice. If they practice without challenging and critiquing, there will be no change. And I want to go back to our quote that sort of led us here is that ultimately, our prime goal was to really ensure that the world is a better place after our students leave our classroom. Thanks. So, one of the best things about being the moderator of this is one, I get to listen to you all talk about the stuff but to I can interject when I'm inspired and I thought so much about some of the things you said. One, when you were talking about high impact learning. I remember being in college and doing an exercise very similar to the one that tongue described about like, you know, raise your hand if you had like, if you've been stopped by police type of thing and I remember that to this day. Who in my class raised their hand and who in my class did not. To your point about how this needs to be integrated throughout the curriculum, I really personally struggle with this because I believe it should be integrated throughout the curriculum. And I also work at an institution that has a standalone race class, and that that is required and that is because right now we're not, we can't guarantee it's being done to the extent that it needs to be so we have this sort of as a remedial measure. I really believe I mean hence the name of the book, but this should be throughout our curriculum, and it should be as individual professors we have the responsibility of doing this, but as individual professors who are then on curriculum committee meetings, who are making curricular decisions we also have the responsibility that this needs to be throughout the curriculum. I also was thinking when you were talking about, you know, the, the some of the flaws, and I was thinking, there is not a lot of biographical information about the textbook editors. And that's another sort of article in the forthcoming book is from a law student about that. And so really calling on Facebook editors, or Facebook publishers to provide information that we know that there is implicit and explicit bias, but to provide biographical information about the people who are editing the casebook, maybe even like a statement about their bias. And I was thinking also that at Roger Williams our law review just announced that going forward, they're going to be putting headshots about the authors and our law review in the law review at like on the back view pages of the law review with the idea of, we need to know who the authors are we need to be curious about who these authors are and we need to be critical about how these authors are so thank you both. I thought that that was really, really helpful to contextualize some of this discussion. When I was reviewing the framework, I was really struck by one of your assessment questions, which was, whose stories are being told. As we start to prep our materials for next semester, perhaps we can really engage with this question. I think it'd be so helpful if faculty members who teach the same classes at the same institution or at other institutions could sit down with coffee and just work through this question for an hour. I think if we did this, we'd be more open to where we have been exclusionary, where we have deep prioritized content, where we have made assumptions, where we have prioritized maleness and whiteness, and where we have failed to be critical. So my question for the two of you is like, what do you think of this? How might you see individual professors or entire law faculties engaging with your framework? How might you see casebook authors and editors engaging with your framework? Yeah, we'll do the same thing where I'll start and then Daniel will finish. I think we quite like doing that. So I think you make a really good point here. I mean, it's about individual professors. Is it about entire faculties? And I think, as you mentioned, it's actually both. It cannot be one or the other. Every individual carries that responsibility and entire law faculties, entire institutions carried this responsibility. And when we are talking about decolonization, it's a process. It's a decolonial process rather than decolonizing, meaning that there's an ultimate end point where this is going to be done and dusted and well done. Now we can all pat ourselves on the shoulders. So it is an ongoing effort and that ongoing effort needs to be a lot more holistic. And I, you know, it's great to see the engagement in with the questions in the framework. I mean, that was the very point of this framework is to allow people to look at that and start thinking about these questions more deeply and looking at their material. And clearly, you know, casebook authors and editors need to consider what cases they're choosing to be included, you know, adding some contextual narratives, but also questioning the assumptions they're making and contextualizing these cases and maybe it requires a little bit of a rethink of how casebooks are done. In the UK, there are no casebooks. What there is is case law, and you refer to case law as you go through the material, but you don't have a book that is a compendium. Because if you think about the whole idea of a compendium of an edited volume where it tells you which cases you need to look at, well, that suggests already a particular narrative that already suggests a particular angle that is being presented. So the question needs to, and as you said, perhaps knowing the biographies of the editors, but even if you know the biographies of the editors, we're really focusing on the sort of identity politics, which can in itself be very problematic. So just because the identity of the editor is one or the other doesn't necessarily mean that that the perspectives that are being presented in the cases that have been selected are going to be as holistic as they need to be. So I think what, you know, a more holistic approach would be to really think about the program as a whole, you know, incorporating various legal traditions, alternatives, forms of justice, and really thinking about, you know, how and what is being taught. Where exactly do you teach? It was lovely to see that at the beginning of the session, there was a land acknowledgement and that is a fantastic start. But sometimes we need to go further, you know, where are these sessions being taught? Who are buildings named after? Who are rooms being named after? Who are they not being named after? Which communities are the objects of each of the cases of the research? You know, is it predominantly African-Americans who are the victims here? You know, again, I think these things need to be thought at very carefully because we are conveying a very particular narrative as we do that. Because we should also question, you know, who is affected by the laws? How are the laws interpreted in very different ways and felt in very different ways, depending on what community you are. It's not just about gender, it's not just about race, it's about socioeconomic status. All of that is packed into it, so it's that intersectionality of identities. And, you know, and what knowledge do we value? What do we think is even important? What is it that we choose to convey and what do we not convey? Every single one of those decisions has a meaning and whose laws are recognized and whose are not. I think those are all pieces. Danielle? I'm going to echo all of that. I think that everything Anamaka just said is spot on and resonates with what I would say. But I do agree, right? The very first step is sitting down either by yourself with your cup of coffee and your material and asking those questions and going through the framework. And then bringing it out to your colleagues so that you can learn more from your colleagues as they question why they're doing what they're doing. And it is, it's an ongoing process, right? It shouldn't be a one and done. Okay, cool. My syllabus is great for this year. It'll be great for the next year. It's always ever changing. And we want to ensure that, you know, you don't read the framework, think about it and forget about it. It's as society evolves as law evolves, we want to make sure that we're revisiting, you know, our biases and the voices that are being unheard. Thank you so much. I'm going to bring tongue and dead back for my last question. I've heard some criticism from students that assigning material that supplements the casebook sends the message that the material is not as important. And we're furthering other, we're further othering the already othered in our traditionally white male centered curriculum. If we want to start with tongue and then go to Deb, how might you respond to this criticism? Yeah, so that's a great criticism. But my response is that I use videos and pictures beyond DEI issues. In fact, the whole reason I started this project was I found a phone booth a long time ago, a real phone booth. And there's a really important fourth amendment case involving a phone booth and what it is. And I started to realize to my students even know what a phone booth is. And I was so excited to be able to show them the phone booth. And then I found pictures of drugs at the Vancouver Police Museum and having led a sheltered life. I had never seen this stuff. I thought students might be interested just to know what crack cocaine looks like and meth and so on. So when I present my slides, I have pictures or videos in almost every class. I think DEI is an important part of that, but it is not the only part. So I don't think the students walk away with a message that, oh, it's going to be another DEI video, but rather it's just, oh, it's another video. It's going to be supplementing the casebook in some other way. And some of it is DEI and some of it is, you know, here are pictures of the people in the case. Although that obviously does have DEI components. And like I said, drugs, what do they look like? I have a video on Faraday cages, because that matters for another Supreme Court opinion. There's a woman scientist at Science Museum who has a great two minute video demonstrating how to make your own Faraday cage. So I play that so they can see how it actually works. So I think that's how I would respond to that. I try not to utter it by not singling it out. It's just part of one of many. Thanks, Deb. Yeah, and I think that similarly, I have a lot of supplemental material that has nothing to do with DEI material. I show the video of Larry Hibble, who is a white gentleman, who again put this up on the internet for all of us to consume of his stop with the police where he's arguing that he shouldn't have had to show them identification or identify himself to them and sort of have my students work through that. What does this little encounter look like to you and so forth? And this is something we do pretty much every day. There's that sort of material in class. And so it's not even, I wouldn't describe it as a supplement. It is just part of the class. And I was also a defense attorney in practice. And so we're also constantly talking about the realities of practice as a supplement to what we're doing. So it's all part of a whole. But also, I think part of integrating everything is finding that material in the casebook, right? I was really interested when Tom was talking about the Darden case, because I teach actually all the same criminal procedure talks books. So very familiar with all of this. And often you'll be reading through the cases, and you'll find the supplemental material right there in the case that you can bring in to serve enhancer students learning. I always give my students a lot of information. We talk a lot about Dolly Map and what her life was like and who she was as a person and why she's an American hero. And so it's part of the case, not just supplemental material. It's kind of finding those Easter eggs in the textbook too. And so I think that if you do it that way, it's not like, here's the real material. And now here's the fun stuff over on the side. It's all part of an integrated class. Sure. I think that the pushback on some of that is also similar to one of the questions we got in the chat about open access materials. And the idea is if we're looking from a DEI perspective, shouldn't law schools also be thinking about the format of an access to instruction materials, thinking about open access texts that include DEI substantive content. And, you know, as someone who primarily uses open access materials, there's this sort of yes but, which is, you know, and that requires a tremendous amount of work to edit your cases, or to select to organize, to edit, to make accessible. That is one of the biggest problems that I have is if we're, you know, really going to be accessible to everyone, some of the content that's available OER isn't accessible and making it that way. And so there's sort of a variety of issues to unpack here. I do use a lot of OER content. I also realize how much time goes into that, and it's resources that some professors may or may not currently have due to their like curricular course load. But I think that's a move forward. I think the more we're integrating DEI content, I think the more that we're considering open access resources, I think the more that we're thinking about it in a framework of decolonization. The more we're moving in the right direction. And I just want to sort of amplify what Danielle and Anomica said, which is it's not just inserting a piece here and there. It really is thinking about it holistically to decolonize and I encourage everyone to take the steps they can right now, and it's going to be uncomfortable and to keep doing the uncomfortable work but with our eye on this full integration and decolonization. Thank you so much to everybody for coming today. I read in my email that at ALS there is going to be some type of session on the use of Netflix in classes. So I look forward to that and I hope anyone who's going to that will will attend because I think that's going to go really well with what we talked about today. Thank you to the speakers. Thank you to Morgan and Chelsea and everyone at Roger Williams behind the scenes. We will be back in 2024 with the rest of our integrating doctor and diversity series. Our books should be coming out shortly. Good luck with the end of this semester and grading and we will see you all in 2024.