Law Schools

Stanford Joins List Of Law Schools With White Professors Using The N-Word In Class

In an unusual twist for these stories, the professor has committed to never using the word again.

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Stanford Law School Professor Michael McConnell, formerly a judge on the Tenth Circuit, was lecturing over Zoom in his Creation of the Constitution class when he joined the ranks of a disturbing number of white law school professors to deploy the n-word in class.

Specifically, McConnell quoted Patrick Henry using the term during the debates over the ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, expressing his concern that the Constitution might one day result in emancipation. As is often the case with these incidents, McConnell justified his decision as part of a commitment “to teach the history of the American Founding warts and all, and not to bowdlerize or sugar-coat it,” a noble enough sounding statement, and yet a remarkably flimsy one when someone, in this case, Professor Michele Landis Dauber, cuts through the self-congratulatory fluff and points out that if McConnell wished to convey that Patrick Henry had used racial epithets in seeking “to build opposition to the Constitution by stoking the racism of his Virginia audience,” then, “Indeed you could have just said that.”

This is the recurring theme of every one of these incidents — there’s never a scenario where just saying “racial epithets were used” doesn’t accomplish every conceivable pedagogical goal unless you’re teaching Intro To Correctly Pronouncing Slurs. And yet we keep having these incidents where white professors seem convinced that without their elegant recitation of these terms, law students will be left befuddled as to what could have possibly been said. There is a grand paradox in how these professors routinely manage to cast aspersions on the maturity of students for needing events “sugar-coated” even though it’s precisely because these are highly educated and sophisticated students that they don’t need to a full dramatic reproduction to be able to fill in these gaps.

In the aftermath of McConnell’s lecture, the BLSA, upon whom this burden always unfortunately falls no matter what school is involved, circulated an open letter framed as a sly “guide” to professors who want to use racial epithets in class:

So you want to say it in class. Your class needs to hear this. And they need to hear you, a white male professor, say it. But you know you can’t just say it. You remember what happened last time a white professor said it in a law school classroom. Students rose up, the administration apologized, it was a whole thing.

But. You want to.

So how do you do it? You don’t want to continue to face these students day after day, week after week, for the rest of the quarter. You don’t want to face a sea of angry students at the podium. And now that classes are on Zoom, you don’t want to risk a recording of you saying it circulating online.

So what do you do?

You plan it out carefully.
You wait until the last week of classes.
You pick out the perfect line of historical text containing it.
You start reading.
You turn off the recording.
And then.
You can say it.

The letter’s hypothetical non-hypothetical concludes with, “Easy. A job well done.”

While it doesn’t change the thrust of the letter, it may well be that the BLSA is wrong about one important point: this probably wasn’t the “perfect line of historical text.” In Professor Dauber’s aforementioned response, she points out that there’s good reason to believe that this specific quote is entirely made up! It survives today based only on the hearsay account of a plantation owner from the 1850s — the run up to the Civil War — claiming that someone told him that Patrick Henry had said it. As a consequence it probably says a lot more about how people go out of their way to cite the Founders to drum up legitimacy for their contemporary political stances, something that Originalists like McConnell should probably recognize.

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Late Friday, Professor McConnell offered his response. While defending his use of the term as part of a pedagogical effort not to “sugar coat” racism in America’s founding, McConnell largely eschews the “screw you” petulance of UCLA’s Eugene Volokh and concludes that “in light of the pain and upset that this has caused many students, whom I care deeply about, I will not use the word again in the future.”

Even if it wasn’t a perfect apology, it’s actually refreshing to have a professor embrace criticism rather than hide behind the worn out “use v. mention” distinction that tries to put the seal of approval on quoting epithets. In the ongoing discussion of the incident, Professor Richard Thompson Ford took on this popular theory and why it’s ultimately irrelevant:

Because in fact, that’s not even the point. The point is that a significant number of students have said, politely but forcefully and repeatedly that they feel this word is an insult and an assault and they have asked us not to use it. They’ve told us this word puts a target on their back, it forces them out of their focus on their studies and into a psychological position of fear and vulnerability. Some of these students have had experiences that most of us can’t imagine, so it would be more than a little presumptuous to assume they’re being oversensitive, even if others don’t see the big deal.

By the end of the weekend, Dean Jenny Martinez outlined the following path forward:

I am taking two steps this week. First, I have asked the faculty to vote, as a matter of governance over our curriculum, that at a minimum everyone who teaches a required 1L class, be required to undergo periodic training on classroom management, including diversity and inclusion issues. Second, I myself am scheduling meetings over the coming weeks with every single faculty member to convey how important it is to improve equity and inclusion in classroom teaching and to discuss strategies to improve classroom dynamics generally and to avoid repetition of this particular problem specifically.

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That seems like a very diplomatic and professional way of saying, “hey, don’t use slurs in class!” but that’s why she’s a law school dean and I’m not.

Earlier: Prominent Law School Professor Drops The N-Word After Specifically Being Asked Not To Do So
UCLA Law School Calls For Tolerance, So Obviously Professor Blows That Up With Childish, Racist Tirade
Welcome To Emory Law School — It’s Been 0 Days Since We Last Used The N-Word In Class
Why Can’t Emory Law School Professors Stop Using The N-Word All The Time?
University Lawyer Drops N-Word But Self-Censors ‘F**k’ Because We Wouldn’t Want To Offend Anybody
Law Professor Drops Racial Slur In Class Because Otherwise How Will Black Students Ever Learn About Racism?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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