Diversity – why it’s important and why it’s not easy
I am currently writing a paper on gender and the Court of Justice of the EU. In preparation for that paper and as part of my research I spent quite a bit of time reading material about why a more diverse judiciary might be a good thing. This got me thinking about diversity more generally and as usual my thoughts eventually turned to law schools and legal education. The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that diversity in law schools is really important for all sorts of reasons. So firstly what do I mean by diversity and secondly why do I think it is important?
Working at Bradford University Law School gives an interesting but skewed picture of diversity. The University as a whole scores very highly on diversity indicators but the experience in the classroom is very different. Our cohort is not particularly diverse. Most of our students are from an asian background and most live at home very close to campus. So yes, I am including ethnic/racial/religious diversity in my thinking as well as things like gender, sexual orientation, disability etc. However I am also thinking about questions of class, education, background, relationship status and, perhaps importantly position, in relation to the purpose of legal education, differences in aims and ambitions and career goals and reaosn for being at university. I am thinking about both students and academics here.
I, as most of you will know, am a firm believer in a liberal legal education. I don’t care much about the needs of the profession or at least not that they should impact on what we do at degree level. I don’t care whether students want to go into legal practice or do something else. I care about learning for learning’s sake and wanting to learn/know/find out just because… Not so long ago I would probably have argued that we should all take that stance. However, the more I think and read about diversity the more I think I was probably wrong there. Diversity of views is really important and it is crucial that students are exposed to a variety of views. It is part of learning to make up your own mind, to work out which views you find convincing and why and to form your own views which you can justify in a reasoned (if passionate!) way.
So diversity is important because it brings different views, experiences, stances and understandings to the table which will continuously challenge our own and force us to think deeply about why we think what we think and why we do what we do in the way that we do it. It may lead us to change our minds but even where it does not, or perhaps particularly where it does not, it helps us to formualte our point of view more clearly, to engage with critiques and to further the arguments in the ongoing debates about the purpose of legal education as well as substantive areas of law etc. Engaging with different views and experiences is a good thing. It helps us drive knowledge and understanding forward. It also of course is important for students (and academics) to have role models and people they can identify and feel comfortable with.
In a law school such as the one I work with, this is really important because our student cohort is not very diverse. Students come from similar backgrounds with similar aspirations and expectations. They are not really exposed to differing views from their peers so it is important for us to share our thoughts, our perspectives with them to give them alternative visions as to what law degrees can be about, what can be achieved with them and what the future may hold. We need to make them think. I don’t want students to think I’m right. I’d like students to think about why I might be right, or why my vision of legal education might work for them – or indeed why it might not.
And that leads me on to why diversity is hard. Genuine diversity only works if you have people who are genuinely diverse. As academics though some of the things that might have made us diverse have been eroded by the education etc that has brought us to where we are. It might be that as legal academics and law teachers we have more in common than not. Some of us will of course hang on to our identity as LGBTQ or feminists or working class or whatever more strongly than others but even then it is likely to have been influenced by also being a legal academic. Diversity is also difficult because it means we have to engage with what we think and why rather than just taking it for granted and then we have to go one step further and engage with what others think and why. And that engagement has to be genuine. A simple ‘well that’s just rubbish’ won’t do. We all like to be right, we all like to think that our view is the best, the most logical and the most convincing and if only people would listen they would see that. However to really benefit from diversity ourselves and help our students do so we need to accept that we might all be wrong but hopefully will all be right and that we can all learn something from each other – even if that is just to defend our views in a more considered and holistic way.
I am still thinking about this and I am sure there are flaws in my argument here but I thought it was worth posting and if you have any thoughts on this please do share!
Comfort Zones and why we need to be out of them
I had a riding lesson on a horse I had never ridden before yesterday and I struggled. It was physically much harder than riding the horse I ride often but I am more interested in this: It showed up flaws I know I have and mistakes I know I make that have somehow become masked. As my instructor put it ‘you learn their flaws and they learn yours, you learn to work around them’. The same is true for working outside of your own academic discipline. I’m a lawyer; I think in certain ways, I do things certain ways and I have a particular approach. I have learned the flaws of my discipline and in a sense the discipline has accommodated my flaws – I learned to work within it. It’s comfortable in the same way that riding a horse you know well is comfortable.
I have spent the afternoon with a group of political scientists talking about a book project I am lucky enough to be involved with. My brain is now full of questions I can’t answer, concepts I don’t know anything about and ideas for research I want to do (with the caveat that actually it probably has already been done in another discipline). I am out of my comfort zone. Some of my thinking, writing and teaching are being given a theoretical framework or context which puts a different spin on things, which exposes the flaws in my thinking which my discipline has masked and which expose the flaws in my discipline which I have just learned to accept and no longer see. It’s deeply uncomfortable (even if not quite in the physical sense that riding a different horse can be) because rather than making more sense it is making less. But this is what academia is all about for me, if thinking is to move on, we have to feel uncomfortable. If we’re not uncomfortable we are not asking searching enough questions and if we are not at least a little out of our comfort zone I don’t think we’re learning. Stepping outside of what we normally do and taking a minute to reflect on it is really valuable and we should do it more. Perhaps what I am doing is a little extreme, there are more gentle ways to familiarise yourself with another discipline than a 3 day intensive workshop where all other contributions come from a different background than your own – but the point still stands. Every now and then doing something different is good for you.
So, I wonder if, as legal academics and law teachers we play it safe too often? Do we push our students out of their comfort zone enough? Do we confront them with new ideas and ways of looking at things which exposes the flaws in their thinking and approach and makes them questions the assumptions that underlie everything they do? Probably not, but we should.
Lost in Translation – LLM Approval Meetings
I had a meeting as well as several conversations with colleagues last week about approval of a new course, an LLM to be precise. Throughout these conversations and to some extent the meeting itself, there was a real sense of a ‘them and us’ culture pitching those on the approval team/committee and administrators against the academic team (so in this case mainly me) designing the course. It was a pre meeting to get the paperwork right for the approval event in a month’s time. Apart from arguments about whether the institutions ‘validates’ or ‘approves’ and whether it is ‘Master degree’, ‘Masters degree’ or ‘Master’s degree’, there were elements I found both interesting, frustrating and ultimately a little upsetting. The details of the meeting and issues we discussed are really not important here but at one point I was told in a nice but firm way ‘it isn’t your programme’. And of course the person making that statement is right, it isn’t mine, it’s a university degree course, if it is anybody’s it is the university’s. But as I left the meeting (with issues resolved and everyone sort of happy) I couldn’t shake off that statement and I am beginning to wonder whether it might be at the core of the tension between admin staff particularly staff charged with quality and QAA matters and academics.
Because you know what, that LLM is my programme. Not only have I invested a ridiculous amount of time in creating the paperwork required for it to be approved (not validated!). I have invested far more time thinking about it, designing it, redesigning it, making it coherent, making it flow. But it’s not just time, there is so much of me in that programme. The learning, teaching and assessment (LTA) strategy reflects my LTA philosophy, it reflects my socio-legal background and convictions, it is built on my ethos of education and research. Of course it’s my programme. I’m not a complete nutter, I realise that in due course someone else is likely to take over as director of studies (or programme leader as I think we now call them) and that as we start to teach the programme it will move from being mine to being ours and staff will take ownership of their modules and the programme overall. I know that, but at this stage, it’s very much mine. It has had input from students, other staff, administrators etc but essentially I have put my heart and soul into it (see I can do drama queen quite well!) and it is most definitely mine.
If that is not something that is clearly understood by staff in the Academic Quality Unit (AQU – or whatever equivalent there is at other institutions) and if academics don’t fully appreciate that staff charged with quality assurance issues are likely to see programmes as university programmes without the emotional baggage attached to them then it is no wonder that discussions can get heated, defensive and ultimately get us nowhere. I suspect academics think administrators and AQU staff are stifling creativity and innovation and are caught up in a tick box culture and that administrators think academics are in their own little bubble with little regard for regulation. Neither is probably true, or at least it needn’t be if only we talked to each other in a language both groups understood.
You see when I talk about a module being at Level 7 I am talking about the module itself, the content, the way I see the module delivered and the way I see it fitting into the programme. AQU staff can’t possibly think of it that way – they don’t have the knowledge of the course or the teaching experience to do so – they are thinking about the module descriptor and what that reflects. Asking me to amend the module descriptor so that it better reflects the Level 7 module is one thing, something I will find irritating but will ultimately be ok with. Telling me my module is not at Level 7 is something else entirely, I will get defensive about – I designed it, trust me, it’s at Level 7. There are other examples of academics and administrators using the same language but meaning very different things but I don’t want to bore you, essentially I (and maybe academics generally) am talking about the programme etc and AQU are talking about the paperwork.
As academics we perhaps need to be less precious about ‘our programmes’ but then I didn’t really think I was. I am just as interested in providing documentation which is ultimately going to be for students, which is clear, user friendly and provides the reader with a strong sense of what the programme is about as AQU are. What I am not interested in is ticking boxes for the sake of it. I know my LLM is a good quality programme which will engage students and help them become better researchers, critical thinkers and writers. What I need AQU to do is help me turn my vision into paperwork the institution can understand because, as it turns out, I don’t speak the institution’s language – and I don’t think I want to either.
My Conversations 