L'Affaire Kaplan: Our Future Together

Dear colleagues,

It is my profound hope that the time is coming that we can turn to the task of reweaving the frayed fabric of relationships within our community, with our students and amongst ourselves.

One important task before us is a serious collective exploration of how we teach controversial and sensitive subjects in our classrooms. I'm sure all of us have given much individual thought to this topic, and it has been the subject of aardvark sessions over the years and other collaborative discussions. Recent events, however, give a new urgency to the task, and I understand that several efforts are underway to approach this topic. In that setting, I would urge those who have not read through to its conclusion the recent "Inside Higher Ed" piece circulated by [Colleague T] to pay special attention to the concluding paragraphs of that article. Beverly Daniel Tatum, president of Spelman College, offers a number of suggestions that seem to me to offer a very promising path for us to consider. President Tatum is the author of a forthcoming book, *Can We Talk About Race?" That goes on my Amazon list today, and I look forward to reading it as soon as it becomes available. Perhaps others will as well, and we can find a way to talk about it. We could do worse than to invite President Tatum to visit with us to discuss these issues.

Second, we must consider concrete and ongoing efforts to rebuild our relationships with the Hmong community, as well as other groups who have been affected by the recent controversy. I know efforts are underway in this dimension as well. I hope these efforts include consideration of initiatives in our teaching program, clinical activities, and other outreach activities in the community to further demonstrate our ongoing commitments. One of the points Len was trying to make in his Feb. 15 class was the failure of state and federal governments to respond adequately to the challenges of displaced minority communities, including the Hmong in Wisconsin. Perhaps we can do more to be part of the solution.

Third, one thing that stood out for and shocked me at the Forum was the gulf between "we" and "they" in various perceptions of our institution. Many of the comments came from people who do not know us very well, and struck me, very frankly, as ill informed products of passion rather than knowledge. But others came from within. We need to understand those more clearly.

My own view is that we need to engage in a more wide-ranging reconsideration of the nature of our community. In particular, as a professional school training persons who are likely to become public citizens and community leaders as well as practicing lawyers, we need to rethink our model of the faculty-student relationship.To put some complicated and only partially formed ideas into a short phrase, I would suggest we consider our students as junior colleagues in a shared enterprise of learning and professional development, with responsibilities to our collective learning process.

In language from my other life mostly outside the law building, this would incorporate concepts from the field of "virtue ethics" and concepts of professionalization that go considerably beyond adhering to legalistic rules of professional conduct. It would reject the model that we are mere purveyors of a service purchased by student consumers, and that we are participants in a game in which students seek to acquire a credential by the least means necessary.

This is not the occasion where I can fully spell this out, and I will need the help of many of you to develop and test these very preliminary ideas. But let me offer an image of what I have in mind.

Let's think back to the night of the Forum. We heard briefly from several of our Hmong students and from outside scholars about the Hmong culture and historical experience, and then turned to other statements. The rhetoric became increasingly heated and personalized in attacks on one of our faculty colleagues. Comments turned into tirades. Now--just imagine--if one of our Hmong students had sought recognition to interrupt those tirades, and to say something like the following:

"Look. We are very unhappy with the way Professor Kaplan conducted his class, and we think that his use of what we see as stereotypes of our community and culture were damaging to us. We are also not happy with the outcome of our private meeting with us, and we welcome this opportunity to teach the law school community more about our history and culture from our own perspective and that of scholars who understand us better than does Professor Kaplan. But we are agreed that Professor Kaplan is not a racist, and did not intend to damage us, although that may have been the effect of his actions. This is not supposed to be a show trial. Let's cool the rhetoric and return to our educational mission for tonight."

Does anyone doubt that would have been an electrifying moment, a singular transforming moment of grace that would have exemplified our highest ideals for our work here?

My point here is not to put down anyone for statements that were not made in an extraordinarily heated and difficult environment. I certainly didn't find a way to make a constructive intervention in those circumstances, although I'm not sure anything I or another faculty member might have done would have had a positive impact in those circumstances, and we are a lot older and more experienced than that group of students.

I do, however, wonder whether we are doing all that we might to enhance the likelihood that such a moment of grace might occur. Do we talk enough about the courage of those, lawyers and activists, who have brought about meaningful social and legal change in our country and around the world? Do we exemplify that courage in our teaching and in our other activities as lawyers and as citizens in the world? Do we adequately address the courage it takes to stand up against popular opinion and community pressures and the risk of personal and familial consequences to find and do the right?

Personally, much of what makes me love this place is that so many of us try to find and do the right in our individual activities, and in some of our collective efforts, notably including our clinical activities. But I am not sure we have adequately considered these commitments as part of our institutional vision and mission, and communicated these commitments to our students and the wider community. As we consider our future together, I hope we will do so.