Law Reviews, Law Schools

Amid Protests On Campus, Yale Law Journal Addresses Its Own Diversity Challenges

By openly and directly confronting their diversity challenges, the Journal hopes to spark the difficult reflection and dialogue necessary for meaningful and lasting change.

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“We gon’ be alright.” – Kendrick Lamar

Almost two years ago, the Yale Law Journal commissioned a study of the Journal in an effort to address its diversity challenges and identify ways staff members can better foster an inclusive community.

This week, the Journal released two comprehensive reports as a result of the two-year study: Full Participation in the Yale Law Journal by Professors Susan Sturm and Kinga Makovi, and Patterns in Yale Law Journal Admissions and Student Scholarship by Professors Ian Ayres and Anthony Cozart. These two reports work in tandem — Professor Sturm’s qualitative picture provides important context for Professor Ayres’s quantitative findings, and vice versa.

In their Full Participation in the Yale Law Journal report, Sturm and Makovi write:

Many YLS students, along with faculty and administrators, perceive that sensitive topics, problems, criticisms, and areas of disagreement were very difficult to address constructively in the venues where students typically interact, especially with those likely to hold different views. Many students described recurring issues relating to gold stars [markers of prestige] and identity that affect them personally and YLS more broadly, but they do not feel safe raising them. . . .

Several referred to recent events — particularly the protest related to Ferguson — as a space where cross-racial, cross-gender, faculty-student collaboration occurred, and were eager to build on that foundation.

This Project, and the conversations it is intended to initiate, offers an opportunity to construct spaces where this kind of cross-group, difficult, yet constructive dialogue can occur.

This aim requires self-consciousness about how to frame the discussion so that diverse groups will participate, the size and composition of the group, and the shared aspirations that could motivate engagement in these dialogues and possible actions they generate.

Without the capacity and space to engage in difficult yet constructive conversations about issues of difference, YLJ will find it difficult to advance its stated goal of increasing full participation on YLJ.

The research surfaced many opportunities to build on the foundation that the Journal has laid for advancing diversity and full participation as part of its overarching goal of building intellectual community and impact. Specifically, Sturm and Makovi identify several opportunities in their report, including:

  1. Connecting YLJ’s mission of impact and intellectual community with full participation and diversity goals;
  2. Building capacity for ongoing inquiry about full participation, especially at key decision points;
  3. Facilitating constructive dialogue about full participation involving YLJ;
  4. Identifying and supporting student and faculty brokers who can provide effective individualized support to diverse students;
  5. Developing opportunities for cross-identity collaboration in areas of mutual interest;
  6. Cultivating capacity for critical analysis through editing and writing; and
  7. Considering strategies for long-term sustainability and leadership succession, consistent with editorial board autonomy.

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Sturm and Makovi conclude their report by stating:

YLJ has made a commitment to transparency, diversity, and building intellectual community. The next steps involve inviting the larger community into a dialogue that critically engages with the findings and their implications for deliberation and action. By being willing to look fully at its patterns and engage openly with the larger community about its struggles, YLJ has already undertaken the hard work of advancing full participation in YLJ. There is room to grow, but there is also reason to be encouraged.

Given the recent racial tension and well-established diversity challenges on campuses like Missouri and Yale, these reports may prove quite timely in providing recommendations and identifying opportunities for a journal, school, or firm to better foster an inclusive community.

By openly and directly confronting their diversity challenges, the Journal hopes to spark the difficult reflection and dialogue necessary for meaningful and lasting change. The reports are well worth reading. After reading the reports, do you believe the Yale Law Journal can successfully address their diversity challenges and better foster an inclusive community over the next few years?

Against the backdrop of broader structures and patterns — concerning gender, race, and class — the Yale Law Journal recognized, to its credit, that it needed to proactively confront its own diversity challenges. How can the legal profession, as a whole, proactively confront its diversity challenges and better foster an inclusive community? We have a long way to go, but there are many reasons to be encouraged.

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Renwei Chung is a 2L at Southern Methodist University School of Law. He has an undergraduate degree from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Golden Rule: How Income Inequality Will Ruin America (affiliate link). He has been randomly blogging about anything and everything at Live Your Truth since 2008. He was born in California, raised in Michigan, and lives in Texas. He has a yellow lab named Izza and enjoys old-school hip hop, the NBA and stand up paddleboarding (SUP). He is really interested in startups, entrepreneurship, and innovative technologies. You can contact Renwei by email at [email protected], follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.

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