Race, Books, and Education: Selective Erasure, Misinformation, and Reclaiming Our Stories
NAPABA’s Civil Rights Committee presents “Race, Books, and Education: Selective Erasure, Misinformation, and Reclaiming Our Stories,” a three-part webinar series. In Session 1, experts will discuss the importance of teaching ethnic studies and elevating the stories of marginalized communities, including AANHPI history, and current policy efforts to teach this history. Session 2 will discuss book bans, and why their reach has gone as far as banning children’s books about Asian food. Session 3 will describe how professors are responding and adapting to the current attack on DEI and race on college campuses, its impact on the pipeline into academia, and what this means for the ability to teach Critical Race Theory or meaningfully discuss race in college and law school campuses going forward. 

Session 3: Controlling College Curricula
State legislatures are targeting “DEI” on college campuses. Where is this coming from, and how is it affecting faculty? This session, the third and final in NAPABA’s “Race, Books, and Education” Series, will describe the DEI practices and coursework on college campuses, how professors are responding and adapting to this attack, the impact on faculty hiring and recruitment, and what this means for the ability to teach Critical Race Theory and meaningfully discuss race on college and law school campuses. 

Panelists

Peggy Li (Moderator), American Constitution Society — Senior Director of Chapters, ACS; Vice President of Community Relations, Asian American Bar Association of Houston; Chair of the Government and Public Sector Lawyers Network and Member of the Judicial and Executive Appointments and Nominations Committee, National Filipino American Lawyers Association.

Meera E. Deo, Southwestern Law School — Meera E. Deo is a national expert on legal education, racial representation, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is also Director of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), which houses the largest repository of law student data and is based at Indiana University-Bloomington. Before joining Southwestern, she was a tenured Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. Professor Deo has also held previous visiting positions at Berkeley Law, UC Irvine School of Law, UCLA School of Law, UC Davis School of Law, and New College of Florida. She teaches Civil Procedure, Evidence, Law & Society, and Race & Law. Her research utilizes empirical methods to interrogate institutional diversity, affirmative action, and Critical Race Theory. Professor Deo's scholarship has been widely published in law reviews and peer-review journals and cited in numerous amicus briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2020, she was elected to the American Law Institute.

Professor Deo’s book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia (Stanford University Press, 2019), draws from her innovative Diversity in Legal Academia project, the first national empirical study of law faculty utilizing an intersectional framework. The book examines how race and gender affect interactions with faculty and students, tenure and promotion, work/life balance, institutional support, and other aspects of the personal and professional lives of law faculty. Professor Deo’s sobering findings expose ongoing raceXgender inequities. She also proposes structural solutions to improve legal education. 

In her ongoing empirical study, Pandemic Effects on Legal Academia, Professor Deo builds on findings from the book to analyze how the global pandemic affects scholarly productivity and the career success of vulnerable faculty, including caregivers, women of color, and untenured professors. Another research trajectory traces the evolution of affirmative action jurisprudence, utilizing data from LSSSE to propose improvements to law student recruitment and retention. Her theory-based scholarship also contributes to conversations involving antiracist language, intersectional inclusion, and raceXgender bias.

Vinay Harpalani, University of New Mexico School of Law — Vinay Harpalani teaches courses in constitutional law, civil rights, civil procedure, and employment discrimination. Professor Harpalani was the recipient of the 2017 Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award from the Association of American Law Schools Section on Minority Groups; and the 2016 Junior Teaching Faculty Award from the Society of American Law Teachers. His scholarship focuses on the intersections between race, education, and law, as he explores the nuances of racial diversity and identity from various disciplinary perspectives. His writings have covered topics such as affirmative action in university admissions, racial ambiguity, skin color discrimination, and the psychological development of racial identity. Professor Harpalani’s 2012 law review article, “Diversity Within Racial Groups and the Constitutionality of Race-Conscious Admissions”, which was published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, was cited in eight U.S. Supreme Court amicus briefs in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin I and II, and was quoted (with citation omitted) in Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent in Fisher II. His other articles have appeared or will appear in the Maryland Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online, Seton Hall Law Review, NYU Annual Survey of Law, Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy, and other journals. Several of these articles have also been cited in legal briefs or opinions at the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the New York Court of Appeals.

Melissa Pang, Princeton University — Melissa Pang is Senior Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Specialist at Princeton University, where she collaborates with administrative units and DEI committees across campus to develop, support, customize, and implement employee-related diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to further cultivate an equitable and inclusive Princeton in line with Princeton’s DEI strategy. 

Prior to working at Princeton, Melissa was a DEI manager at an AmLaw100 law firm in Philadelphia, associate general counsel at The School District of Philadelphia, and a transactional attorney at two large Philadelphia law firms. She was one of the only DEI professionals across the country to focus on administrative staff at a law firm.

Melissa is co-chair of the Young Lawyers Network of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), serves on the Board of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Pennsylvania (APABA-PA), was President of APABA-PA in 2019, and is a past Chair of the Diversity in the Profession Committee of the Philadelphia Bar Association. 

Melissa graduated cum laude from Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she was a staff member of the Temple Law Review and President of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association. Melissa received an Honors Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from McGill University. 

Rose Cuison-Villazor, NYU School of Law & Rutgers Law School — Rose Cuison-Villazor is a Fellow in Residence at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Cuison-Villazor is Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar at Rutgers Law School where she previously served as Interim Co-Dean (2021-2023) and Vice Dean (2019-2021). She is also Director of the Center for Immigration Law, Policy, and Social Justice, which conducts publicly engaged research and policy work on behalf of noncitizens and their families.

While at BWLC, she will work on a book project that explores the extent to which mid-20th century immigration, military, and citizenship laws deployed race and gender to separate mixed-race families from living together in the United States.

Cuison-Villazor’s overall research agenda examines laws, policies, and norms that determine membership and belonging. She teaches and writes in the areas of immigration and citizenship law, property law, critical race theory, Asian Americans and the law, U.S. territorial law, and equal protection law.

Cuison-Villazor’s scholarship has appeared or will appear in top law journals in the country, including California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, Michigan Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, New York University Law Review, North Carolina Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Washington University Law Review, William and Mary Law Review, and University of California Davis Law Review.

Cuison-Villazor has previously taught at the University of California Davis School of Law, Maurice A. Dean School of Law at Hofstra University, and Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. She has also visited at Columbia Law School and served as a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia Law School Center for the Study of Law and Culture and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California Berkeley Center for Law and the Humanities.

Co-Sponsored By

• Law School Professors & Administrators Network
• Asian American Bar Association of Houston
• Asian Bar Association of Las Vegas
• Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the Greater Washington, D.C. Area
• Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Pennsylvania
• Asian American Bar Association of New York
• Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area
• Committee of 100
• National Filipino American Lawyers Association
• American Constitution Society