Indiana University Law Professor Urges State Senate To Fight DEI

Indiana University Law Professor Urges State Senate To Fight DEI

This is the way to do it. More people need to stand up and make their voices heard.

The Federalist reports:

American Bar Association Requiring All Law Schools To Push DEI, Displacing Constitutional Law

When Indiana University implemented DEI standards in its law school curriculum, Professor John Lawrence Hill warned the state legislature about attempts by “extreme idealogues to indoctrinate students” that “fly in the face” of America’s legal foundations.

Addressed to Indiana State Sens. Jeff Raatz and John Crane, Hill’s letter challenges the university’s new mandatory “responsible lawyering” course for first-year law students, introduced to comply with the American Bar Association’s (ABA) “cross-cultural competency” requirements. Hill argues that this move politicizes legal education.

“This class is guaranteed to further polarize and politicize the law school environment and represents yet another attempt by the academic Left to provide a platform for extreme idealogues to indoctrinate students who are essentially academic hostages,” Hill wrote in his letter. “DEI is now ‘in’ at the McKinney school….”

In an interview with The Federalist, Hill, a professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law (IU McKinney) says that issues with the ABA’s DEI requirements are long-standing.

In February 2022, the ABA introduced a new standard for legal education. Standard 303(c) reads, “A law school shall provide education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism: (1) at the start of the program of legal education, and (2) at least once again before graduation.”

This marks the first time the ABA has mandated non-legal coursework in law school curriculum.

Hill learned of the new ABA requirement when he was serving on the law school’s academic affairs committee, which was tasked with implementing curricular reform. At the time, Hill chalked it up to an “unnecessary” addition to students’ legal education.

Once Hill departed from the committee, however, the university faculty capitalized on the new ABA instructions. Although standard 303(c) can be satisfied through orientation sessions, lectures, or “other educational experiences,” the faculty at IU McKinney opted to create a mandatory DEI course.

“[As] things developed, and I saw the way it was going … it wasn’t just unnecessary. It’s been baleful,” Hill says. “I mean, it’s really been … used as a predicate to make other changes.”

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