Equity, Justice, & Engagement

The Office of the Associate Dean for Equity, Justice and Engagement was established by Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig upon joining BU Law in 2018. The Associate Dean for Equity, Justice and Engagement works on multiple fronts to make BU Law a just, inclusive, and engaged community of faculty and students. Erika George begins her leadership in this role in fall of 2024.

Khiara Bridges served as the inaugural Associate Dean and, upon her departure, was succeeded by Anna di Robilant (from 2019 to 2021), Fred Tung (from 2021-2022), Ron Wheeler (interim, from 2022-2023), and Jasmine Gonzales Rose (2023-2024).

Teaching and Classroom Climate

One of the primary missions of the Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, and Engagement is to encourage and support interested colleagues to develop and adopt an inclusive pedagogy. Legal analysis can hardly be taught through what Professor Kimberle W. Crenshaw called a “perspectiveless” pedagogy, that is, without directly addressing conflicts of values, experiences, and world views. Virtually all first-year classes, from Constitutional Law to Property to Civil Procedure, involve questions of race, wealth inequality, gender, or sexual orientation. Yet, law school classes have historically offered little space for open and competent discussion of these questions. First-year legal education is a much richer experience when it also directly addresses hierarchy and subordination. The Associate Dean for Equity, Justice and Engagement promotes a variety of initiatives aimed at developing new teaching methods and materials for faculty to employ in making the learning experience more equitable and inclusive. As part of these initiatives, on February 28th-29th, 2020, BU Law hosted a Symposium titled “Racial Bias, Disparities, and Oppression in the 1L Curriculum: A Critical Approach to the Canonical First Year Law School Subjects.” The Symposium brought to BU Law top-notch legal scholars who are prominent participants in the national conversation on inclusive pedagogy in legal education.

Faculty Recruitment, Retention, and Development

The Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, and Engagement works with the faculty appointments committee to recruit top-notch scholars from historically underrepresented groups as well as scholars who would bring to BU Law a greater variety of methodological, intellectual, and political perspectives. Ensuring that a broad population of scholars has access to legal academia is one step. A related and critical second step is to improve faculty retention by addressing the enduring barriers to advancement and promotion, rooted in unconscious bias, experienced particularly by women and faculty of color. The Associate Dean for Equity, Justice and Engagement is responsible for providing mentorship and professional development opportunities for junior faculty from historically under-represented groups.

Intellectual Life

The Associate Dean for Equity, Justice and Engagement also works closely with the Associate Dean for Intellectual Life to bring to BU Law important national conversations related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and wealth inequality. Starting in Fall 2020, BU Law will host a series of lectures in which prominent scholars will discuss the latest developments and trends in scholarly fields that implicate different aspects of diversity, including methodological and ideological diversity. Accordingly, the series will focus on fields such as Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ+ Legal Studies, Women’s Legal Studies, Quantitative and Qualitative Empirical Methods, and Natural Law Theory.