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Penn State Joins Fight Against Racism

Penn State’s Dickinson Law is updating its curriculum to include teachings on anti-racism.

In response to the killing of George Floyd, the law school is implementing a required course, “Race and Equal Protection of the Laws,” that examines systemic racism in health care, housing, criminal justice, education, commercial law and in democratic institutions, Bloomberg Law reports.

“We are rebuilding our 187-year-old law school on an anti-racist platform,” Dickinson Law’s dean, Danielle M. Conway, tells Bloomberg Law. “We are reconsidering not only what we teach—but how we teach—to make sure people practice law in a way that promotes equal treatment of all.”

PUSH FOR CHANGE

Across the country, law schools are seeking out ways to weave anti-racism into their institutions. In August 2020, 150 deans of law schools petitioned the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to consider anti-racism training and education to be required at accredited law schools.

“We believe that the ABA should require, or at least consider requiring, that every law school provide training and education around bias, cultural competence, and anti-racism,” the petition letter states. “That said, we do not believe that the specific content of such training and education should be mandated by the American Bar Association; instead, we believe such work should be left to each law school to decide for its students.”

A number of law schools have already begun to add required courses on racism and law including University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law and Tulane Law.

“We have the power to love one another, to respect one another, and to be decent to one another,” Dean Conway says in a past statement on brutality. “We now need the will.”

Sources: Bloomberg Law, Penn State Dickinson Law, American Bar Association

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