THE
CIVILIAN CIVILIAN
A STUDENT PUBLICATION FOR THE LSU LAW CENTER COMMUNITY OCTOBER 2015 | VOLUME 12 | ISSUE 3
g n i v a e W : y r t s e p a Ta
THE DIVERSITY REPORT One of the most important, perhaps the most important challenge that faced the Paul M. Hebert Law Center’s Diversity Task Force (and its successor the Standing Committee on Diversity and Inclusion) was defining what diversity is. While a one-sentence definition of diversity is a tricky proposition, Bill Schulz a fair understanding of the term as the Task Staff Writer Force understood it might be inclusiveness. Perhaps given Louisiana’s troubled history of race relations, the word “diversity” has become a binary concept, expressing purely a white/black notion of society. In Twenty-First century America, however, diversity is no longer shackled to merely black and white, nor is the concept of race itself any longer moored in the problematic domain of black/white, as it now includes ideas of ethnicity, nationality, and bi-raciality1. For this reason alone, there is a theoretical and practical imperative to expand diversity beyond older understandings of the term into a consciously more inclusive paradigm that settles, perhaps ambiguously, but nevertheless accurately into the phrase “diversity and inclusiveness.” It is this understanding of the concept of diversity that the Diversity Task Force has embraced as the most inclusive currently available. For, too, the concept of inclusivity goes beyond simple diversity, even in the broader sense of the term suggested above, into the realms of gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Here, the Task Force’s report on diversity and
their suggestion as to a specific diversity statement for the Law Center to adopt is entirely sympathetic to the goal of creating an academic environment in which the tapestry of Twenty-First century America is fully displayed. At this point, the work of the formal Task Force is complete, and its report has been released. The task of implementation of the recommendations in the report has now fallen to the newly created Standing Committee on Diversity and Inclusion. Headed by Professor Christina Sautter, the Committee’s time has initially been devoted to liaising with the faculty and the Student Bar Association, examining the budget and legal issues involved with implementing Task Force’s CONTINUED ONthe NEXT PAGE... recommendations, and developing short, mid, and long range plans for accomplishing its goals of increasing diversity and inclusiveness, while also raising the standard of professional conduct expected of both students and faculty members. One of the Committee’s immediate goals is the restructuring of the student code of conduct, a delicate balancing act. The new code will be expected to both curb unacceptable behavior such as that which prompted the creation of the Diversity Task Force in the first place, and also not interfere with constitutionally protected speech. According to Task Force member Professor John Church, the Task Force did not engage in any fact finding, nor did it investigate, in detail, reports of racism, sexism, and other offensive behavior, however its members did conclude that enough anecdotal evidence existed to prompt the wide variety of changes that it recommended.
1. For a good overview of the theoretical problems of race, ethnicity and biracialism, see Lewis Gordon’s Her Majesty’s Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neo-Colonial Age, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE...