An Uphill Climb
Berkeley Law’s national workshop confronts challenges for Latina law professors
COMMON GROUND: Temple University’s Evelyn Rangel-Medina ’14 (center) and Rachel López (right) enjoy a light moment with Seattle University’s Nazune Menka. Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small
“That’s problematic — we’re always an outlier because of these demographics of the faculty population. You deal with struggles not being normative in your own institution,” Moran said.
Dozens of Latina law professors from across the country gathered for the two-day event to discuss such challenges and brainstorm strategies for collective and professional development, with leaders of Berkeley Law’s Clinical Program helping to coordinate and lead conference panels.
While Latine students make up about 14% of the law student population, diversity in faculty and senior-level leadership positions — especially Latina representation — lags far behind. Latinas comprise less than 2% of tenured and tenure-track law professors and only a handful have served as law school deans.
Panelists described structural problems Latina academics face, which result in careerlong challenges, and addressed the need to prod law schools to hire and nurture talented underrepresented faculty — in particular those who bring perspectives historically excluded from the legal academy.
“Who’s in the room making faculty hiring and curriculum decisions is really important,” said Berkeley Law Professor Victoria Plaut, UC Berkeley’s vice provost for the faculty. “Participate in faculty governance to help shape the policies of your institution. It can feel like invisible and uncredited work serving on such committees, and it can be a hard position to be in, yet it has to be done and done well.”
Participants described a lack of institutional recognition that faculty priorities should include supporting and mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds, and how such work is rarely seen as a form of leadership.
They also discussed growing attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at universities and elsewhere, and on teaching critical race theory. One participant described needing a police escort to her classroom after receiving threats from a neo-Nazi group for addressing race issues in class. Another was stopped by a campus security officer when returning her robe after her school’s commencement; when she asked two white colleagues of a similar age if the same thing happened to them, they said no.
“There are many ways that people subtly let us know they don’t want us here,” said keynote speaker and U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ana de Alba ’07 (see “From the Fields to the Federal Bench”). “But we didn’t get this far to just stop at the door.”