Law School Launches ‘Freddie Gray’ Course
Over the past year, the news surrounding police brutality and killings has created waves across the United States. And the law school community has not gone unscathed. Last academic year, Columbia Law School allowed students to postpone finals if they felt emotionally disturbed by the events and resulting protests. Most recently, the University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore has announced a course dedicated to Freddie Gray, who was killed in a police-related incident less than four months ago.
The course, entitled “Freddie Gray’s Baltimore: Past, Present and Moving Forward,” will be eight weeks and begins in September. Professor Michael Greenberger will be teaching the course. Greenberger heads up the school’s Center for Health and Homeland Security and specializes in counter-terrorism and emergency response legal issues.
In addition to Greenberger and other law school professors, the course will have guest lecturers from “academics, experts, and officeholders.” Students will be graded on a short paper and a solution to the problem to be presented and discussed in the class.
“We see this course as an opportunity for our students to grapple with important issues in their backyard,” the school’s dean, Donald Tobin, wrote in a statement also published in the Wall Street Journal. “We want not only to educate our students but to inspire them to act on what they’ve learned and work with our neighbors in West Baltimore to strengthen our community and city.”
From the course description:
“The idea for this course emanates from the recent disturbances in Baltimore arising from Freddie Gray’s arrest and his resulting death. These events have highlighted and/or uncovered serious on-going social and financial dislocations within the City. The course will examine the recent unrest itself and then examine the causes of, and possible solutions to, those dislocations, including an examination of problems in policing; criminal justice; housing; health care; education; poverty; and community development and joblessness.
The course is not viewed by its organizers as an end in itself. Rather, it is intended to be a springboard for further student and faculty involvement in citizen and government efforts to reform law and policy in the subject matter areas listed above. Students will be apprised throughout the course of volunteer opportunities to work on the issues addressed in the course.”
Source: Wall Street Journal