Harvard Law School Is Revamping Its Student Orientation To Promote Diversity

This dean wants to "level the playing field."

Harvard Law School

We brought in Verna Myers’s consulting group, which includes two Harvard Law grads, to do what we called “community building”—conversations about valuing diversity and understanding your own identity.
Each of the seven sections had their own community building discussion. It started with a discussion of who you are for each person in the group. Such as, “Who’s the first in their family to go to law school? Who identifies as a member of a racial group? Who has come from a school that wasn’t in the Ivy League? Who wasn’t born in the country?” It was also a conversation about understanding bias and how it can impact our discussions or how we view issues.

—Marcia Sells, Harvard Law School Dean of Students, on the major changes Harvard Law has implemented to its student orientation. Sells says this is part of an effort to “level the playing field” and foster inclusion on campus.

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