The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium has done some truly fantastic work exposing harassment of conservatives and the insidiousness of Critical Race Theory at Yale Law School. We highly recommend you catch up on all of it:
- Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium details the hell Yale Law put part-Cherokee student and Federalist Society member through over BS ‘racism’ complaints
- Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium reveals how Yale Law School’s unjust crusade against part-Cherokee conservative student is going further off the rails
- MUST READ: Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium fully exposes Yale Law’s diversity director for pushing insanely racist, antisemitic diversity trainer on students
Alas, Critical Race Theory is so persistent and poisonous, its toxicity is not limited to Yale Law School. It’s spreading to other law schools around the country, and even the most prestigious law schools aren’t immune. In his latest investigative piece, Sibarium takes a close look at how Critical Race Theory has infected Georgetown Law:
Last week, I reported that a lot of law schools are requiring courses on CRT.
This week, I do a deep dive into the new requirements at one of those schools: Georgetown Law.
It's not just one class; it's the entire first-year curriculum. 🧵https://t.co/DSDxKq6whX
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
In addition to his Free Beacon piece, Sibarium has written a comprehensive thread detailing what’s going on at Georgetown Law:
At most law schools, the first few weeks of property law are spent on foundational cases of British common law. At Georgetown University, they are spent on structural racism and cultural appropriation.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Students in professor Madhavi Sunder's mandatory first-year course learn on day one that the history of American property law is "the history of dispossession and appropriation," according to videos of the course reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Recommended
Lecture slides from the first month of coursework trace the "birth" of modern property law not to English courts, but to "Native dispossession and the enslavement of African Americans." "Possession," one slide asserts, "is a legal term of art for a settler capitalist society." pic.twitter.com/9sz4zsyUQF
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
These legacies of oppression "continue in contemporary doctrines" of property, Sunder said on the first day of class this semester. For example, her slides explain, "Intellectual Property has a cultural appropriation problem," especially when it comes to black choreographers. pic.twitter.com/Youxznr0bT
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Their dance moves were allegedly appropriated by the popular video game Fortnite, and by white influencers on TikTok. pic.twitter.com/DK5UDO5q4K
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
To help her students conceptualize the problem, Sunder quotes the "antiracist" author Ijeoma Oluo, who defines cultural appropriation as the "adoption or exploitation of another culture by a more dominant culture."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Students are then asked to apply Oluo's definition of cultural appropriation to intellectual property law.
Sunder wasn't just putting her own spin on a stereotypically dry class; she was also laying the groundwork for a sweeping transformation of the law school curriculum. pic.twitter.com/2uygg5k8mO
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
In September 2021, Georgetown Law's faculty voted to adopt a new "institutional learning outcome": All students will be expected to graduate with the "ability to think critically about the law's claim to neutrality and its differential effects on subordinated groups…"
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
"…including those identified by race, gender, indigeneity, and class," according to a faculty motion reviewed by the Free Beacon.
These themes, the motion states, are "foundational knowledge" that "should be advanced throughout the entire first-year curriculum."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
To that end, the motion directs a number of administrators—including the "Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion"—to "identify first-year professors" who already "advance the new institutional learning outcome" in their courses. https://t.co/3uiI4N0YNV
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Sunder is one of those professors: She told her students that her course would "satisfy" the new requirement, as would "many other property classes" at Georgetown.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
On top of the first-year curriculum, students will also need to take an elective course that "has been certified" to "focus on the importance of questioning the law's neutrality."
Note that the premise of the course must be that questioning the law's neutrality is important.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
The certification process will "require a detailed examination of the course's syllabus" by the associate dean for academic affairs, "in close consultation with the Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion." pic.twitter.com/8W7aWSEYMh
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Georgetown is not the first law school to mandate courses on social justice. In February 2021, the USC Law announced that all incoming J.D. candidates would be required to take "Race, Racism, and the Law," citing the "racial reckoning of 2020." https://t.co/2fSwRlDjhM
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Two months later, the University of California, Irvine School of Law said that all students must take a course on "race and indigeneity, structural inequity, and the historical bases for such inequity. https://t.co/poxMTKEEnb
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
According to the Georgetown motion, "similar reforms" are under consideration by law schools at Columbia University, UPenn, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Ohio University, and Penn State.
But Georgetown is far and away the most influential school to actually implement such a requirement.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
It is a stalwart of the "top 14″—law schools traditionally seen as stepping stones to elite law firms, clerkships, and judicial appointments. And its scholars have long set the tone for legal academia.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Several Georgetown law professors were early proponents of critical legal studies, the academic precursor to critical race theory.
The school is hoping to capitalize on this influence, framing its requirement as a model "for others to follow."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
"At Georgetown, we often lead rather than follow important trends in legal education," the motion states. "We believe we have an opportunity to do so when it comes to race and racial justice in the curriculum."
Georgetown's peers may have no choice but to follow its lead.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
In August 2020, William Treanor, the dean of Georgetown Law, was one of 150 law school deans to petition the American Bar Association to require that "every law school provide training and education around bias, cultural competence, and antiracism." https://t.co/Ir7LIXBGC7
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
That’s the same William Treanor who eagerly caved to the mob calling for Ilya Shapiro’s head on a platter, by the way.
The ABA, which accredits nearly all U.S. law schools, subsequently adopted a requirement with almost identical language: https://t.co/fSs4Io42qy
Georgetown itself cited that requirement as an "important motivation" for the new curriculum.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
"To be clear," the motion adds, "we do not bring this motion as a grudging act of compliance with our accrediting organization."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
The motion came after a number of student groups demanded that the administration "mandate a critical race theory unit in all first-year criminal justice courses" and establish a "racial justice requirement." Notice that Georgetown ended up doing far more than that.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Several students called the curriculum a "Trojan Horse" for critical race theory—not as one perspective among many, but as the animating premise of every class. The line between instruction and indoctrination has become especially blurry in a mandatory "Criminal Justice" class.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
A syllabus for one section of the course asserts that "race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and similar dynamics play a central role in shaping constitutional criminal procedure, policing, and our concept of public safety." Again, this is the PREMISE of the course.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
In another section, students were told that they would focus on "two big policy issues" throughout the semester: "mass incarceration" and the "discriminatory impact" of "race" and "poverty," according to slides reviewed by the Free Beacon. pic.twitter.com/5NcosCCc76
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
For Luke Bunting, a third-year student at the law school, the new curriculum is a solution in search of a problem.
"The idea that law has a disparate impact is already taught," Bunting said. "There is no shortage of conversations about race in the classroom."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Against this backdrop, some students and professors worry that the added focus on social justice will leave less time for the basics.
"The number of minutes spent in a classroom is finite," said Josh Blackman, who has taught property at South Texas College of Law for a decade.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
"As professors spend more time discussing other ancillary issues, less time will be spent on foundational issues that lawyers need to know about to practice law."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
An alum of Sunder's class echoed that worry. "We spent so much time on theory that we rushed through important concepts really quickly," the third year student recalled. "Some of them are definitely on the bar."
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) March 30, 2022
Suppose they’ll have to change the bar exam next to reflect the growing emphasis on Critical Race Theory, then. Bodes well for the future of the legal profession, doesn’t it?
The problem for left-wing education is that people are paying attention, so it gets ever more difficult to simultaneously indoctrinate students in these ideas while denying that any such indoctrination is happening. https://t.co/eQ28uiKX0Z
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) March 30, 2022
Unfortunately, institutions of left-wing education don’t seem to be in any rush to stop.
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