MINORITY LAW PROFESSORS: Will the Best and the Brightest Continue to Teach?

After a decade of progress, minority law professors are finding that the environment at the nation's law schools is becoming an increasingly hostile one.

In a letter circulating among the nation's law schools and addressed to "Our Colleagues of the Majority Race," 22 minority law professors are making their views heard. Citing "decreasing institutional support" and "increasing challenges to our legitimacy as teachers in the classroom," they write that "the professional lives of minorities of color teaching at the nation's law schools have been deteriorating in recent years."

Increasingly overburdened with committee work and a heavy student counseling load, minority professors wonder whether law schools are as committed minorities as they once were. Add to that an alarming exodus of minority lawyers from the teaching profession, and many law professors say they find themselves increasingly discouraged and disappointed with their profession.

"It's a very frustrating and demoralizing time for minority professors," says Regina Austin, an associate professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. "You see a sort of rolling up the carpet of welcome for minority professors."

"There's a very distressing redirection in legal academia," says Ronald Delgado, a visiting professor of law at the University of Southern Illinois. "It's a much tougher, colder environment psychologically" for minorities.

"We're no longer the priority we once were," Delgado adds, referring to the effort law schools make to attract minorities.

The Bell Incident

Those fears were confirmed, minority law professors say, during a controversy earlier this year involving Harvard Law Professor Derrick A. Bell. While teaching constitutional law to first-year students as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, Bell experienced what he terms "the worst moment of my professional life."

In what Bell wrote was a response to "student-reported teaching inadequacies," members of the Stanford law faculty scheduled a one-week lecture series designed to supplement his course and compensate for perceived deficiencies in its coverage. After members of the Stanford Black Law Students Association protested, charging that the lectures were "a hostile and racist response to the teaching style of Professor Bell," the series was cancelled.

Stanford Law School officials maintain that there was no racism involved. "The matter originally arose from widespread complaints about his teaching," says Jack A. Friedenthal, associate dean at Stanford Law School. "It's hard to believe that they were racially motivated."

But several minority professors, citing Bell's well-established reputation in the legal profession, dispute Friedenthal's claim. "Bell was a visiting superstar," Delgado says. "He was at least equal to his white colleagues."

"No white professors with those credentials would ever have been challenged," says Robin A. Morris, an assistant law professor at Tulane who signed the minority professors' letter.

Getting Racism Out of the Closet

The Bell controversy generated national media attention and prompted the minority professors--including three from Harvard--to write the letter to the nation's deans.

"It has served as a catalyst to get the issue [of racism] out of the closet," says Northeastern Law Professor Denise S. Carty-Bennia, adding that the incident sent "a loud and clear message that this is still the bastion of white male supremacy."

Minority professors around the nation say that the Bell incident, while more dramatic than most, is hardly atypical. The lack of respect shown to Bell by faculty and students is prevalent throughout American law schools, they say.

"We are now seen as almost superfluous, that our time has past," says Delgado, of Southern Illinois. "We get fewer students and colleagues willing to support us."

"There's a deep intellectual disrespect for us because we are Black or Hispanic," says Morris, Tulane's only Black among the school's 37 law professors.

Much of this, they believe, comes from students, who often view minority professors as "tokens," hired under affirmative action programs which are designed to reach federal quotas.

"Many students feel that they are being cheated by someone who's been hired under affirmative action," says Patricia A. King, an associate professor at Georgetown Law School. "And affirmative action, wrongly in my view, is regarded as finding someone who's not as qualified."

"One can't help but feel that there's a special burden to overcome in terms of having credibility with students," says Christopher F. Edley, Jr., an assistant professor who last month became the fourth Black to receive tenure in the history of Harvard Law School. Edley and Bell are currently the only Blacks tenured at Harvard, the nation's oldest law school; two other Black assistant law professors are also on the faculty.

"There's more hostility to affirmative action, period," says Daniel J. Givelber, dean of Northeastern Law School. "That makes it very difficult" for minority professors, he says.

As a result, minority professors feel that more and more students are challenging them in the classroom, dismissing their views and questioning their competence.

"I think it's our legitimacy that's being challenged and that is clearly tied to our views and the kinds of problems we address," Austin says.

"I would love it if all they did was debate my views," Morris says. "But they're questioning my basic right as a teacher to choose my material."

Among students, Delgado says, he finds not only "an unwillingness to engage in serious repartee, but simple dismissal" of their views.

Good Teaching Commands Respect

But Georgetown Law School Dean Robert Pitofsky disputes Delgado's claim. "I think [minority] views are taken very seriously," he says. "When they go into class and demonstrate proficiency, the students will accept them," Pitofsky says. "A good teacher, white or Black, will be accepted by the students."

Stephen T. Yandle, associate dean at Yale Law School, agrees with Pitofsky. "I see no distinctions being made [by students] between minority law professors and their colleagues," he says.

Minority professors also feel that they are overburdened with committee work and counseling duties. Because there are usually only two or three minorities on a law school faculty, and because minority representation is usually required on faculty committees, they find themselves spending an inordinate amount of time at committee meetings. And because they are viewed as sensitive to the needs of minority students, they are often expected to counsel them.

"One of the difficulties is that it does cut into the amount of time you can use for research and you get no credit for it," University of Minnesota Law Professor Gerald Torres says. "It's a hard position to put young minority professors in."

"I spend an enormous amount of time in people time," Morris says. "That leaves me hours behind [in research]."

In order to devote enough time to their research, minority professors find they have to say `no' to student requests for counseling. But many say that turning students away is not the solution. "It's a very painful thing to do because you do feel that you're here to impart knowledge to students and interact with them," Harvard's Edley says.

"It's hard to say no because you know that there's not always someone out there who can help them," adds Rachel S. Moran, acting professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.

Across the country, law school deans agree that this remains a very serious problem. "I think [minority professors] are called upon in doing more counseling than their white counterparts," Pitofsky says.

"Some very special demands tend to be made on minority faculty members," says University of Pennsylvania Dean Robert H. Mundheim. "I think that we have to be sensitive to that problem and be protective of those faculty members."

Edley says that although his relationship with his Harvard colleagues is good, he finds "more skepticism, more hostility" among his Harvard Law students

"I have only on rare occasions felt uncomfortable in my relationship with my colleagues, but there have been many times when I've been unhappy with my students," he says. "One can't help but feel a sense that there's a special burden to overcome in terms of having credibility with students."

Areva D. Bell, a third-year law student, says that this problem of credibility exists for both minority professors and students at Harvard: "I think we all feel that pressure that you have to be twice as good," she says.

Both Harvard Law Dean James E. Vorenberg '49 and Professor Bell refused to comment on the situation of Black professors at Harvard Law.

Losing Minority Lawyers

Minority law professors also say they are increasingly concerned about the high rate of turn-over in their ranks. Minority faculty members estimate that in the past six years, 43 per cent of their fellow lawyers have left the teaching profession altogether. They cite the increasing hostility from students and faculty--and the burnout from the excessive demands on their time--as probable reasons for their colleagues' departures.

"My suspicion is that it's because the environment is harsher," Delgado says. "The environment is not as warm [for minorities] as it is for non-minorities."

"I think that nothing is as hard as being the single minority law professor," Givelber says.

This hostile environment may also deter promising minorities from teaching law, many fear. "Those of us in the business are extremely concerned that prospective minority lawyers who would become future law professors not be discouraged from pursuing access to the profession," Carty-Bennia says. She believes that incidents such as the Bell controversy "send a message to the best and brightest of minority graduates that this is not a business that takes them seriously."

Recruitment

Many believe that the law schools themselves are not making enough of an effort to attract and hire minorities. "The effort to increase the number of minority law professors seems to have lost its intensity," Torres say. "There's a sense that the commitment to diversity is not there."

"There has been a lull in the seriousness of faculty appointing minority members," Edley says. Harvard, he believes, "is doing OK after several years of unsatisfactory performance."

The deans disagree. Recruiting minorities represents "a serious effort on the part of our appointments committee," Yale Associate Dean Yandle says. Yale currently has three minorities, two of them tenured, on its law school faculty.

"We're very aggressive in recruiting minority professors," Georgetown Dean Pitofsky adds. Georgetown, with four minority professors, is regarded as one of the best in its willingness to appoint minorities to its law school faculty.

Although minority professors agree that an increase in their numbers would alleviate the burdens of committees and counseling, most believe that other steps must be taken to improve the racial atmosphere at the law schools.

"Numbers alone will not solve the problem," Austin says. "There's got to be a sharing of power and a change from the norm."

Other suggested remedies are that the law schools make a greater effort to recognize and promote minority scholarly contributions, that minority professors be given time off to write, and that young professors be protected from being over-worked.

Most of all, minority professors hope that their white colleagues on the faculty recognize and respect their differences.

Carty-Bennia sums up this view: "We'e got to have continued discussions of our differences. If we respect those differences by acknowledging them, then we'll go a long way."