Ohio Law School Deans Criticized Students For Being ‘Excessively White’

Two deans at an Ohio law school criticized the student body for being “excessively” white after a study declared that the law school was the 144th most white school in the nation. 

According to email correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, deans Jessica Berg and Michael Scharf at Case Western Reserve University said they were upset that the school was considered in the top 200 “whitest law schools in America in 2021.” 

“First, we should not be satisfied with the diversity of our student body, even on the measures used in this study,” the deans said. “It does not mean we have an equitable number of students who identify as Black, Native American, Latinx, Asian American, Pacific Islander, or other under-represented groups.” 

In the same email, Berg and Scharf admitted that the school increased the percentage of first-year law students “who do not identify as white” by 11% since 2004. 

The email followed the March 9 release of the “Whitest Law School Report,” a study commissioned by Vernellia Randall, a professor emeritus at the University of Dayton School of Law. The report measures “diversity” in 200 United States law schools and identifies “excess whiteness.” 

The report is released on “racism.org,” a web page operated by Randall. The study quantifies the “whiteness” of a school “based on its Total Whiteness score, Excess Whiteness over [Law School Admission Council] applicant pool, and Excess Whiteness over state population. The higher the score, the more inappropriately White the school.”

Of the 200 schools, 21 schools had “no excess whiteness.” Among the 21 schools were Howard University, a historically black college, and three schools located in Puerto Rico. 

At one point in her analysis, Randall concluded that the “non-historically White schools” were more likely to be “less White” than the “historically White law schools.” 

Law schools, similar to undergraduate institutions, have become increasingly “woke” as they prioritize issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. For example, Georgetown Law School’s Student Bar Association requested that all students put their preferred pronouns next to their names in their social media biographies, on Zoom, and in their email signatures. Students were asked to do so “in solidarity and support” of their transgender and “nonbinary” peers.

Other law schools have institutionalized the “diversity and equity” agenda into their curriculum. Stanford Law School launched a new research hub called the “Youth Justice Lab” focused on making the American public education system “anti-racist.” The “justice lab” is a three-unit course for students and a policy research center that called the American public school system an institution that “perpetuate[s] anti-Black racism, white supremacy, and discrimination.” 

The brave students who speak up against ideologies and institutions that condemn “whiteness” as a sin are often dubbed “racist” by their classmates. A group of law students at the University of North Carolina penned an open letter decrying the school’s “culture of bullying” after a student was doxed for comments that were taken out of context. 

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