The dean of Penn State Dickinson Law resigned on Friday after a former student testified before Congress about the school’s mandatory anti-r
"Conway’s departure follows months of legal and public relations turmoil at the law school, whose strategic plan calls to expand "employment opportunities" for "underrepresented" candidates. The school was hit with a civil rights complaint in May after the Free Beacon reported on the plan. A separate Free Beacon report included audio from the required first-year course, Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws, in which speakers asserted that the justice system is "about keeping black people in their place" and called on students to "dismantle systems that racialize, subordinate, and oppress."
Conway, the executive director of the law school’s Antiracist Development Institute, attended every session of the class.
When Blackman requested an exemption from the course, a committee convened by Conway denied the request. "Faced with the choice of completing my degree in a system that demanded my intellectual submission, or walking away to maintain my integrity, I chose the latter," Blackman said in his congressional testimony. "I withdrew from Penn State Dickinson Law after one semester, forfeited my scholarship, and returned to Texas to pursue my master’s degree."
The testimony was submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as part of a hearing on the American Bar Association’s accreditation standards, which require law schools to provide education on "bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism." Blackman argued that law schools use these standards to justify "ideological programming." And he warned that what’s taught in law school eventually filters into law."
