Stephanie M. Wildman

Affirmative Action: Necessary for Equality for All Women

I am the Director of the Boalt Hall Center for Social Justice at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, where I am also a Visiting Professor of Law teaching Sex Discrimination and the Law.t I am also a Professor Emerita at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where I taught Sex Discrimination and the Law and other classes for twenty-five years. I have been a visiting professor at University of California at Davis School of Law, Stanford Law School, Stanford-in-Oxford, Santa Clara University School of Law, and University of California, Hastings College of the Law. I have served as Co-President of the Society of American Law Teachers and as chair of the Teaching Methods section and the Law and Community section of the Association of American Law Schools. I have published dozens of articles and two books. My curriculum vita is attached as Exhibit A.tt I have prepared this report on an expedited basis at the request of Scheff & Washington, P.C., which represents student intervenors in Grutter v. Bollinger, et al., a case challenging the affirmative action admissions policies at the University of Michigan Law School. I have not previously testified as an expert witness, and I am not being paid for my services in this case. Race-based and gender-based affirmative action are deeply linked. The social and legal histories of affirmative action policies show how steps toward equality for women have followed and been dependent on steps toward equality for black people and other minority groups. Gains made in the Civil Rights Movement were extended to include groups beyond African-Americans and have resulted in a society that is far closer to fairness and real democracy for all. Although affirmative action is commonly associated with racialized meaning, it has been an important tool in combating sex discrimination in legal education and the legal profession and in every other traditionally masculine province from industrial production to other elite professions such as business and medicine. Sex discrimination and gender exclusion are often mistakenly thought of as unracialized concepts, but of course the population of women crosses all racial lines and categories. Thus to talk of all women means to talk about race as well as gender. In the contexts of higher education and of law school, the proportion of women to men is higher within minority groups than it is within the white student

The Classroom Climate: Encouraging Student Involvement

and supposedly objective and neutral. It leaves little or no room for insights based on personal experience or conversations about the allocation of power in society. 13 While silence can be a strength when it is freely chosen, law students often feel compelled to be silent because of the intimidating atmosphere of the law school classroom. This essay addresses the problem of compelled classroom silence. The first part describes techniques a student can use to overcome compelled silence. The second part describes some of my attempts to facilitate class discussion of issues relating to societal allocation of power. A. TECHNIQUES FOR BREAKING THE SILENCE Students can combat silence in the classroom. In a previous article directed to law professors, I described techniques which professors can use to ensure classroom participation by all students. In that article, I articulated a few techniques faculty could suggest students use to overcome silence.14 In this article, I reiterate and elaborate on those

Reflections on Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia Symposium — The Plenary Panel

Reflections on Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia Symposium -- The Plenary Panel in the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice represents the author’s reflections on the recent important book PRESUMED INCOMPETENT edited by Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez, and Angela P. Harris. PRESUMED INCOMPETENT has started a national movement of attention to treatment of women of color in academia; google the reviews and check out the book’s Facebook presence. In this recreation of the symposium plenary, the panelists discuss issues surrounding race and gender in academia, particularly in law schools. My own contribution to the book (co-authored with Margalynne Armstrong) and summarized for the panel focused on working across racial lines and the use of “color insight” to build such alliances.