This June
there were two different graduation ceremonies at the CUNY School
of Law, with 34 students organizing an alternative to the official
event. The separate ceremonies symbolized how deeply the school
has been divided over the denial of tenure to Prof. Maivân Clech
Lâm, a Vietnamese-American expert on the rights of indigenous
peoples.
Lâm was
recommended for tenure by a faculty committee last October. When
the Law School’s Personnel and Budget Committee (P&B) came
back with a negative decision in November, students besieged the
office of Dean Kristin Booth Glen to demand an explanation. A
series of protest actions followed, including a three-day hunger
strike in April that was called off after one student was sent to
the hospital.
“Professor
Lâm is an internationally known scholar,” said Amelia Toledo,
co-president of the CUNY Asian/Pacific American Law Student
Association. “Her comments were solicited by the United Nations
for consideration at the UN’s Global Summit last September.
She’s been a wonderful mentor for students of color, and for
students interested in international law.”
In late
April, the P&B drew support from a majority of tenured faculty
at CUNY Law. An open letter signed by 11 faculty members stated
that while “reasonable people might disagree” with the
P&B’s decision—and while some of the signers might have
voted differently themselves—“the process and the decision are
reasonable.” The letter noted that faculty members of the
P&B had all been elected and stressed that “we respect the
faculty on the P&B and the Dean as people of integrity.”
When the
decision was announced in November, Lâm’s supporters charged
that the P&B had acted improperly—in part because it lacked
the non-voting student member called for in the school’s
governance plan. Lâm immediately filed an appeal, asking Dean
Glen to rescind the P&B’s vote and overturn its decision.
The dean refused, but said that the P&B would “reconsider”
its decision after a student representative was elected. The
student representative took his seat in January, but by April
there was still no word from either the P&B or the dean.
Both sides
grew increasingly frustrated. P&B supporters stressed respect
for the process: “We may each have our own opinions,” said
Prof. Rick Rossein, “but we also know that the P&B has
information that we do not.” They were critical of Lâm’s
advocates, who they felt were not always respecting the
confidentiality necessary to the committee’s deliberations.
Prof. Ruthann Robson told Clarion that this had led to one-sided
public impressions about the case.
Lâm’s
supporters responded that “confidentiality” was being given a
broader definition than on any other CUNY campus, with Dean Glen
unwilling for months to say when she would announce her decision.
Prof. Frank Deale, who chaired Lâm’s tenure committee, wrote in
a reply to the “open letter” that “the reach of
confidentiality has been extended so far…that it can only be
perceived as a means of shielding procedural and substantive
abuse.” (P&B members contacted for this story declined all
comment.)
The hunger
strikers’ main demand was for a speedy—and positive—decision
on Lâm’s appeal. But on April 18, six days after the strike
ended, Glen announced that the P&B’s verdict would stand.
By then Lâm’s
supporters had begun to link her case with broader issues of the
school’s direction. While the clinical program at CUNY Law has
long been considered one of the nation’s best, the school has
had a low first-time passing rate for students taking the bar
exam. In response the school has moved to give more attention to
preparing for the exam, and in 2000 three-quarters of its students
passed the bar on their first try—a threefold increase over
1987.
Curriculum
Debate
Many
students complain that there has been a less desirable
consequence, that the electives in public-interest law and
critical legal theory that had drawn them to the school are not
being given. “Of the 12 courses I had circled before I came to
this school, not one of them was offered,” said hunger striker
Gordon Kaupp, a second-year student. “The school has been in
this mainstreaming process under Dean Glen,” said Kaupp, “with
fewer radical professors and more bar-oriented courses. Maivan’s
case is part of that.”
But other
students favor the curriculum changes. “Many students want bar
coverage,” said Robson, who chairs the school’s curriculum
committee. “Faculty line up to teach the theory courses, and
sometimes these do not have high enrollment.” Rossein concurred,
adding, “We love to teach these courses!” Rossein also argued
that a critical, public-interest
perspective was integral to standard courses at CUNY Law, and that
a good range of electives is still offered.
By Lâm’s
account, she often did not agree with the direction in which Dean
Glen wanted the school to go. Lâm told Clarion that just before
the P&B came to its November decision, Glen offered to arrange
a position for her at the CUNY Graduate Center instead, an offer
which Lâm declined. “Her precise words were, ‘Let’s face
it, you are an intellectual who ought to be tenured at Columbia,
but are a mismatch for CUNY Law School,’” said Lâm. (Dean
Glen declined to comment on this or any other point, citing the
fact that Lâm has filed a grievance. But in a public e-mail last
November, Glen denied that she had “said or implied that
‘intellectuals’ should not be teaching at CUNY Law School.”)
In a widely-circulated e-mail last fall, Lâm said that the dean
claimed her performance in large classes was not good enough,
though Lâm herself contends that her student evaluations were
“well within the norm.”
The most
volatile part of the Lâm tenure controversy has been the question
of race. In late April the head of the school’s Black Law
Students’ Association charged that “Dean Glen has consistently
marginalized students and professors of color under her
authority.” Toledo says that Lâm was subject to “disparate
treatment,” arguing that she has far more extensive publications
than two other candidates who were granted tenure this year.
“There is racism in this, even though people say there is
not,” says Prof. Dinesh Khosla, the one faculty member who
joined the hunger strike and the chair of the committee that
recommended Lâm’s reappointment before she came up for tenure.
Prof. Jill Soffiyah Elijah, who left CUNY Law for Harvard in
January, wrote in April that the denial of tenure to Lâm was
“inexplicable,” and that she had left in part because the
school was no longer “that place of inclusion” that it had
been under Glen’s predecessor, Haywood Burns.
Yet four
of the eleven signers of the open letter supporting the P&B
are women of color, and CUNY Law has one of the most racially
diverse faculties in the country.
“We’re
proud of our record here in that regard,” said Rossein. “We
have the highest percentage of female faculty of any law school in
country. We have one
of the highest proportions of faculty of color, other than some
traditionally black schools like Howard.”
“I feel
disturbed when I hear people making rash allegations of racism,”
said Prof. Penelope Andrews, a South African who signed the open
letter. “It detracts from fighting the struggle that really
needs to be waged.” Andrews said that as a woman of color, she
personally had not found the law school to be a hostile
environment. “One of the things bothering me is that there have
been accusations, not a dialog. These accusations have been
thoughtlessly destructive. That’s disturbing to me, because the
Law School and CUNY are precious.”
Lâm and
her supporters say that diversity is a question of viewpoint as
well as composition. “To say that one supports diversity and
mean only diversity of color, not diversity of the perspectives
that come with the different historical experience of diverse
ethnic groups, is a travesty,” argued Lâm. But others feel that
these connections are not always so clear-cut. “We need a dialog
about how we raise our differences,” Andrews told Clarion,
“and how we separate the individual from the larger ideological
questions.”
Lâm
Presses Case
Next year
Lâm will be a visiting associate professor at American
University’s law school, Washington College of Law—but she is
following through on her pledge to “challenge the negative
tenure decision via all lawful means available to me.” She has
filed a grievance under the union contract, alleging various
statutory and contractual violations (including how she was
treated after a disability leave), and is considering a lawsuit.
One of the
few things that all sides would agree on is Rossein’s
description of the past year’s dispute: “This has been very
painful and disruptive to our community.” While Kaupp said there
has been some progress on the school’s curriculum, it is unclear
to what extent the school’s divisions will narrow in the year to
come. Will the CUNY Law School have a united graduation next June?
As the saying goes, the jury is still out.
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