Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm examining how the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law and Vermont Law School are balancing history with the desire of students to study in inclusive campuses. In the case of New Hampshire, that tension lies in the school's name itself, which honors a former president who failed to take a stand against slavery. At Vermont, the debate centers on a mural that was intended to honor the Underground Railroad, but which some students view as racist and offensive. Staying on the subject, I'm highlighting a new initiative among New York law schools to tackle systemic racism within their own institutions and to share notes on making meaningful changes.

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

The Name Game, Revisited

Last week, faculty at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law voted to ditch the former president from the school's name. It was an interesting turn of events, given that Franklin Pierce—who is the only president to have come from the Granite State—just recently returned to the school's moniker.

You see, the school was founded at the Franklin Pierce Law Center back in 1973, when it was a standalone law school with a strong focus on intellectual property. The University of New Hampshire acquired the law school in 2010 and it became the University of New Hampshire School of Law. (The school's admissions dean at the time said that many applicants didn't know who Pierce was. Ouch.) But in May of 2019, Dean Megan Carpenter announced that Franklin Peirce was returning—an olive branch to alumni who were partial to the Pierce name. The change would also help capitalize on the school's strong reputation for intellectual property, Carpenter said.

Fast forward a year or so and Pierce is back on the outs. In June, amid the national protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, students wrote to the university arguing that Pierce is a racist figure because he did not end—and helped perpetuate—slavery during his presidency, which lasted from 1853 to 1857. Pierce did not own slaves himself and was morally opposed to the practice of slavery, though he didn't support the abolitionist movement either. As his critics have pointed out, he supported the Fugitive Slave Act and signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed slavery to expand west. Put simply, Pierce deemed keeping the nation unified in the run-up to what would become the Civil War more important than ending slavery.

Carpenter in June vowed to gather feedback on the matter. Among the 25 full-time faculty members, 12 voted to ditch Pierce, 6 voted to keep him, and 6 didn't vote at all, according to local news coverage.

"While he may have been a product of his time, he is not a historical figure worthy of the honor of having New Hampshire's only law school, part of the state's flagship public university, named after him," reads a statement released by the faculty following the vote.

Carpenter told the local NPR affiliate that the naming debate is an example of reasonable people holding different opinions. The faculty doesn't have the final say on the matter, though. That decision rests with the University of New Hampshire's Board of Trustees, who have yet to take up the issue.

This issue is obviously much bigger than Franklin Pierce, though, and one I think we're going to see more law schools grapple with in the coming days as pressure mounts on institutions to consider their roles in perpetuating systemic racism. That work has already begun. We saw Harvard Law School struggle mightily in 2016 to address student concerns over the school's official seal, which featured the family crest of early donor and slaveholder, Isaac Royall Jr. (The school changed the seal.) And the University of California, Berkeley School of Law earlier this year removed the name Boalt from its campus, after critics pointed out that namesake lawyer John Henry Boalt was a key advocate of the racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

But now we're seeing debates over historical figures like Pierce, who I'd put in more of a gray area than Boalt or Royall. It's not just names that are prompting these difficult discussions, though.

The same day that the New Hampshire law faculty were voting to give Pierce the boot, Vermont Law School announced that it will remove a 1993 mural titled "The Underground Railroad Vermont and the Fugitive Slave." The series of scenes was intended to honor African Americans and abolitionists, according to artist Sam Kerson. But it's not hard to see why some students took issue with it: The black people (and a few of the white ones) are painted with exaggerated features, most notably enormous hands and feet. The mural has been a source of criticism since at least 2013. And on July 6, Dean Thomas McHenry announced that the school would paint over the mural. He said in an email to students that the mural is not living up to its original mission to honor those involved in the Underground Railroad.

"However, the depictions of the African-Americans on the mural are offensive to many in our community and, upon reflection and consultation, we have determined that the mural is not consistent with our School's commitment to fairness, inclusion, diversity, and social justice," McHenry wrote. "Accordingly, we have decided to paint over the mural."

Unsurprisingly, Kerson thinks the school got it wrong. "To paint it over is outlandish—it's like burning books," he said. "It's so inflammatory, I can't believe it's actually happening."

Long story short: The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement is emboldening law students to challenge their institutions more than ever on issues of diversity and inclusion, and is prompting law school administrators to be more introspective about their own schools and the status quo. That includes examining who their schools honor in names and on buildings, as well as the inclusiveness of their physical campus. It seems that few things are off the table now: Even the faculty of Washington & Lee University is pushing to drop the Lee name, for reasons I don't think I need to explain.

Speaking of Combating Racism…

I want to extend props to the City University of New York School of Law and the Hofstra University Maurice A. Deane School of Law for spearheading a two-day online conference last week with the goal of creating a cross-campus network of law schools dedicated to ending racism in legal education. The sessions drew 300 law school administrators, faculty, staff and students from New York area law schools. The idea is that schools will share resources and ideas for specific programs, curricula and other means to implement a shared anti-racist agenda. It's the brainchild of CUNY Law dean Mary Lu Bilek and Hofstra professor Ellen Yoroshesky, who heads up the school's Freedman Institute.

"We think it is important to seize this moment of awareness and focus on the embedded racism in our country to ensure that law schools are admitting and preparing students to use the law in their careers to combat racism, not continue it," Bilek said in an announcement of the initiative.

Participants spent the first day of the program taking a hard look at where structural racism exists at their own campuses. The second day was devoted to breakout sessions where smaller groups looked at practical applications for ending oppression and racism in legal education. Yoroshesky acknowledged that dismantling racism with legal education and the legal profession is a daunting prospect, but that it's inspiring to see so much interest in taking real action on the issue.

I like the collaborative aspect of the initiative: It doesn't make sense for individual law schools to be having these discussions in silos when they can be sharing notes and approaches. Plus, I think it adds a level of accountability and added pressure to take meaningful action when schools are being compared to peer institutions. I'm hoping this new initiative has staying power…

Extra Credit Reading

Pennsylvania and Kentucky last week canceled plans for in-person bar exams in September and July, and instead will give online tests in October.

Law schools are scrambling to figure out how to respond to a new regulation from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that prohibits those here on international student visas from taking an entirely online course load this fall.

Among the dozen legal education entities that received emergency PPP loans from the federal government were the Law School Admission Council and the Association of American Law Schools.

Thanks for reading Ahead of the Curve. Sign up for the newsletter and check out past issues here.

I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]