Critical Theories

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Session Type: Section Programs

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: Hilton San Francisco Union Square

Room: Continental Ballroom 6

Floor: Ballroom Level

The alt-right attack on higher education speaks in the language of merit, intellectual diversity, free speech and academic freedom. But its actions of banning books, outlawing entire academic frameworks, quashing student protests, and restricting DEI efforts and affirmative action reveal “cancel culture” as its brand, exclusion as its objective, and the imposition of outdated and discredited theories, such as white supremacy and “trickle-down economics,” as its capstone. The underlying goal of the attack, according to Pen America, is not only “to silence ideas and identities that some find uncomfortable; control narratives about the past;” and ensure dominance of only one set of viewpoints and ideologies, but also “to assert direct ideological control over how universities operate -- over university governance” (Young & Friedman, America’s Censored Classrooms, PEN AMERICA (August 17, (2022), https://pen.org/report/americas-censored-classrooms/.
Recently enacted ABA Standards, though a compromised small step, could be used to counter some of these baldly anti-democratic attacks on critical thought and anti-racist education. ABA Standards 303(c) [training law students on anti-bias], 206 [diversity] and 208 [academic freedom] could be worked in tandem to encourage critical discourse in the classroom and acclimate students to integral critical ideas, encompassed in the so-called “divisive concepts” that are currently being silenced.
This expanded session proceeds in two parts. Part I focuses on the ABA standards themselves. Participants will discuss how the standards can be used to normalize the teaching of critical ideas, support academic freedom, and sustain DEI endeavors across our campuses. Part II consists of an interactive exercise focused on action. Moderators will guide session participants through brainstorming and strategizing, identifying concrete ways to aid existing institutions such as the ABA in pushing legal education further toward academic excellence, measured through a more robust commitment to democracy, diversity, and critical discourse in teaching, scholarship, and speech.