Racism In Academia (Not A Breaking Story)

This is a story of a traditional law school.

Laptop in classic libraryInstitutions are products of the past process, are adapted to past circumstances, and are therefore never in full accord with the requirements of the present.—Thorstein Veblen

This is a story of a traditional law school. It is a story I have heard many times at law professor gatherings around the country. It’s a story, which, while not true as a whole, is an amalgam of true experiences people have had being a person of color in academia.

It’s also an uncomfortable thing to write about. Which is in part why I’m doing it. I hope you’ll forgive any errors, omissions, or flaws in the spirit of forgiveness that I always see on Twitter.

As with many tragic tales, this story starts with a Dean. The Dean makes a genuine effort to promote diversity in a predominantly white faculty. The faculty’s new hire is a person of color. People of color now represent 5 percent of this school’s faculty (roughly the percentage of tenure track and tenured women of color). Strangely, for reasons you might guess, that number also represents the percentage of women in the tenure track faculty. Let’s call the new hire Professor X.

Professor X is then put on every committee needed to signal that the school is indeed diverse. She’s on appointments and admissions committees, for example. She is featured prominently in faculty brochures and law school brochures, along with other professors and students of color. We’ll assume here that academic institutions have learned their lesson on “photoshopping” people of color into brochures.

Professor X becomes overloaded with committee work due to the need of the school to show diversity. She mentors the Black Student Bar Association, Hispanic Law Students Association, the LGBT Student Bar Association, and she’s involved heavily in mentoring students who have no other outlet.

Some senior faculty members, each with conflicting advice, counsel Professor X heavily. They want her to succeed, but she’s put in a bind where she fears she’ll annoy or frustrate one of her senior colleagues if she doesn’t do what they want. She chooses one option in terms of writing, and hopes for the best.

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Professor White was hired at the same time as Professor X. He hasn’t had as much committee work, and he hasn’t been mentoring students so much. If he’s on campus for classes, you might see him. Otherwise, he is home writing.

Every year since Professor X has been on the faculty, hiring meetings have been torture. Every time someone speaks of diversity, they say stupid things like “we shouldn’t sacrifice quality, though.” Of course, it isn’t lost on her that they are implying she doesn’t deserve to be there on the merits. It isn’t lost on her that the fixation on certain indicia will always lead them to hire more white males like Professor White. It isn’t lost on her that she is very alone in this room of colleagues. And she trusts none of them, including those that are silent when such nonsense is said.

There are even a few overt racists on the faculty, who everyone seems to tolerate more than Professor X and some of her colleagues would like. One of the racists is quite vocal. Students of color avoid him like the plague (except for that one required course he keeps getting scheduled to teach thanks to the associate dean).

The other? Well, any faculty candidate who isn’t white seems to have a hard time getting this faculty member’s approval. Worse, this person torpedoes the scholarship of any person of color who is giving a job talk. This faculty member is listened to because she’s a “star scholar,” and because, well, faculty members are pretty clueless about ulterior motives. For some reason, it hurts more because it is a woman who is pulling up the ladder for those that come after her.

As Professors X and White simultaneously go up for tenure, everyone is abuzz with how much Professor White has written! Such well-placed articles! Such amazing reviewers! Why, he’s totally better than the rest of us! Easy decision!  Tenure.

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Professor X has a harder time. Despite similarly glowing reviews and despite similarly well-written articles, some faculty members (can you guess which ones?) are explaining that the reviewers are biased, that her articles truly suck, and why one barely even counts as scholarship. Discussion opens up. Concerns are raised about her not having as many citations as professor White. Nobody questions whether the comparison should be made given White writes in constitutional law and X writes in a topic with a smaller population of readers. Maybe she’s bad at self-promotion?

Then come the concerns about the student evaluations. They rated her as nice, but there were concerns in her first semester evaluations. Some students called her “cold,” and “unapproachable.” One of her defenders notes she has won 3 teaching awards, has spent more time in class preparation than the rest of them combined, and that student evaluations are biased. But no matter.

She’s voted in favor. It’s a close vote. But…

The Deanship has changed hands, and the new Dean has decided to write a letter that is not terribly supportive. In fact, it’s downright hostile. Anticipating this, Professor X has been on the lateral market and moves to a new school (with tenure).

All of this sounds implausible, right? Only I’ve seen things like this happen more than once. Of course, this nonsense would never happen at LawProfblawg Law School. Never underestimate the power of denial, right?

I write this because institutions are comprised of people, but the processes, which have been put into place, sometimes take on lives of their own. It takes deliberate steps to stop practices that have set up this type of dynamic. They won’t go away unless the faculty is on board with making it go away.

If some of this story sounds like it is your story, e-mail me.


LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.