Skip to Main Content
Selected Resources: DEI and the Law Classroom Climate
Sean Darling-Hammond & Kristen Holmquist, Creating Wise Classrooms to Empower Diverse Law Students: Lessons in Pedagogy from Transformative Law Professors, 24 Nat'l Black L. J. 1 (2015)
This article is an initial attempt to explore ways law school professors can reduce stereotype threat, create a sense of safety and belonging, and provide the kind of legal education that allows students from all backgrounds to have successful legal careers.
Taifha N. Baker (student note), How Top Law Schools Can Resuscitate an Inclusive Climate for Minority and Low-Income Law Students, 9 Geo. J.L. & Mod. Critical Race Persp. 123 (2017)
Provides ideas for how top-tier law schools can create an inclusive learning climate for minoritized and low-income students; details the institutional, faculty and student factors that contribute to an exclusionary climate; provides personal experiences and anonymous reports to demonstrate how exclusionary climates manifest; and proposes a range of ideas to promote an inclusive climate including communications, workshops and training, and curricular reform.
Erin C. Lain, Racialized Interactions in the Law School Classroom: Pedagogical Approaches to Creating A Safe Learning Environment, 67 J. Legal Educ. 780 (2018)
"Issues evoking tension and microaggressions can pop up unexpectedly, despite the lengths to which a professor plans the delivery of the material. This article will define racialized interactions and psychological safety within the classroom and discuss typical professor responses. It will also explore best practices and practical tools for professors to help students navigate and learn from these interactions while maintaining psychological safety."
Tiffany D. Atkins, #fortheculture: Generation Z and the Future of Legal Education, 26 Mich. J. Race & L. 115 (2020)
Reimagining, reconstituting, and reconfiguring legal education to create a culture of inclusion and activism will be essential and necessary. Engaging in this work “for the culture” means getting serious about diversifying our profession by abandoning exclusionary hiring metrics, embedding social justice throughout the law school curriculum, and adopting institutional accountability measures to ensure that these goals are met. Gen Zers are accustomed to opposing institutions that are rooted in inequality; law schools can neither afford, nor ignore the opposition any longer.
