More Black Women are leading U.S. law schools and changing the conversation on race and gender

Lolita Buckner Inniss (COURTESY OF LOLITA BUCKNER INNISS)

February 1, 2022

“I was the only Black woman, and the sense of always being alone is one that I think people should not underestimate,” Camille Nelson, Dean of the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa

The gist:

This rising cohort of “Black women deans are guiding their faculty and students through a time of contentious debates about academic teachings about systemic racism and inequities. For many of them, part of that leadership means helping their institutions better understand the country’s history and how it inextricably shapes the law today.”

The 19th spoke with 11 of those women about their rise to these roles:

• For Kimberly Mutcherson, holding a dean position is an opportunity to help instill ways of teaching the law that she did not see while studying at Columbia Law School in the 1990s — Dean at Rutgers Law School in Camden

• “We forget what the word ‘critical’ means in both an academic sense and in a real sense…It doesn’t mean that you’re advocating for any particular kind of change. It really means you’re advocating for deep thought in a particular context — in this context, race.” — Lolita Buckner Inniss, Dean at the University of Colorado Law School

• “The person who’s writing the legal doctrine and what voices are excluded also matters, and that has mattered in our country in terms of how the laws operate and what the law facilitates. It’s also important to think about how the forces that are happening outside in the world shape that legal doctrine.” — Onwuachi-Willig, has led Boston University Law School

The deans have an informal network of support.

Browne C. Lewis, law dean at North Carolina Central University, believes “the growing number of Black women in dean positions is less about changing hearts and minds in academia and more of a testament to Black women encouraging and guiding others who are interested in leadership positions. The majority of the deans interviewed said they decided to pursue a dean position after being encouraged by other people, usually other women of color through the process.”

Photo: Sean Scott, Kimberly Mutcherson, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig (COURTESY OF SEAN SCOTT, KIMBERLY MUTCHERSON, AND ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG)

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