News Archive
Dean Bravo Addresses Structural Racism in Law Schools for ABA Publication
10/05/2020
IU McKinney Dean Karen E. Bravo was interviewed for the September 2020 issue of Perspectives, an American Bar Association publication, in an article “Law Schools Vow to Address Structural Racism.”
The feature story examines how law school deans across the country are responding to calls for change in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the unrest that followed.
Responding to the idea that law schools can challenge the legal profession to make institutional changes, Dean Bravo said: “We’ve inherited structures and a certain way of teaching a perspective where we prioritize neutrality. We need to question whether it’s possible to have neutrality. When you go through cases, do you engage with the difficult subjects? We need to equip our instructors to discuss those questions so that if students were to ask a question, they can have that difficult discussion.”
Appointed Dean of the law school on July 1, 2020, Dean Bravo is a well-known international law scholar, and expert in the study of human trafficking. Her research interests include labor liberalization, personhood, slavery, and human trafficking. She is the founder and leader of the Slavery Past, Present and Future project, an interdisciplinary initiative brings together scholars of slavery from a multiplicity of disciplines.
