Unequal Profession by
This book is the first formal, empirical investigation into the law faculty experience using a distinctly intersectional lens, examining both the personal and professional lives of law faculty members. Comparing the professional and personal experiences of women of color professors with white women, white men, and men of color faculty from assistant professor through dean emeritus, Unequal Profession explores how the race and gender of individual legal academics affects not only their individual and collective experience, but also legal education as a whole. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative empirical data, Meera E. Deo reveals how race and gender intersect to create profound implications for women of color law faculty members, presenting unique challenges as well as opportunities to improve educational and professional outcomes in legal education. Deo shares the powerful stories of law faculty who find themselves confronting intersectional discrimination and implicit bias in the form of silencing, mansplaining, and the presumption of incompetence, to name a few. Through hiring, teaching, colleague interaction, and tenure and promotion, Deo brings the experiences of diverse faculty to life and proposes a number of mechanisms to increase diversity within legal academia and to improve the experience of all faculty members.
Traditional library practices and technologies are not neutral, we must identify bias within our communities, libraries and collections. An understanding of both the conscious and unconscious influences on the collection development process is necessary for countering bias. This moderated discussion will address the need for developing, organizing, and making accessible collections with intention.
Raquel J. Gabriel is a Professor of Law and Director of the Law Library at CUNY School of Law where she teaches Legal Research and Advanced Legal Research. Her scholarly interests include integrating issues involving diversity into the pedagogy of teaching legal research as well as into legal education and law librarianship. From 2010 to 2013, she penned a series of columns in Law Library Journal geared towards exploring diversity issues in the law library profession. Professor Gabriel was profiled in the book Celebrating Diversity: A Legacy of Minority Leadership in American Association of Law Libraries (2nd ed).
She is one of the co-editors of the upcoming book (Spring 2021): Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion in the First Year Law School Classroom along with Nicole Dyszlewski, Suzanne Harrington-Steppen, Anna Russell and Genevieve Tung. The book is a collection of essays with practical advice, guidance, and reflections on ways to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion into the law school curriculum. Chapters are on subjects traditionally taught in the first-year curriculum and includes a stand-alone chapter on Legal Research. Each chapter also includes a short bibliography curated by a law librarian.
Julie Graves Krishnaswami is the Head of Research Instruction and a Lecturer in Legal Research at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School. Since 2012, she has taught Advanced Legal Research (ALR), among other courses. Julie also regularly lectures on regulatory, statutory, and legislative history research methods. Her current research focuses on the structure of the United States Code. With Shawn Nevers of BYU Law School, she has a forthcoming article, The Shadow Code: Statutory Notes in the United States Code. With Fred Shapiro of Yale Law School, Julie also published the Secret History of the Bluebook in the Minnesota Law Review. She has also published several pieces on integrating critical thinking methodology into legal research pedagogy. Additionally, Julie is an active member of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). Most notably, she served on the Annual Meeting Planning Committee, chaired the Law Library Journal Article of the Year Award Jury, and was elected Member at Large for the Research Instruction and Patron Services Special Interest Section (RIPS-SIS).
Before coming to Yale Law School in 2011, Julie was a law librarian and legal research professor at Vermont Law School and an Associate Law Library Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. As an attorney, Julie worked as a litigator on national securities and antitrust class actions, and she clerked for Judge Susan L. Reisner of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey. In law school, Julie represented public benefit recipients in administrative hearings before the New York City Department of Human Resources Administration. She has also worked for the Planned Parenthood Federation of American (PPFA), tracking and researching state legislation on abortion and women’s health issues in the public policy/litigation and law departments.
Julie earned her JD from CUNY School of Law (2004), where she was the Symposium and Articles Editor for The New York City Law Review. She received her Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) from Pratt Institute (2008) and her BA in history from Reed College (1999).
Nicole P. Dyszlewski currently serves as the Head of Reference, Instruction, and Engagement at the RWU Law Library. She joined the staff in 2015 as the Research/Access Services Librarian having come from a public legislative library. She received a B.A. from Hofstra University, a J.D. from Boston University School of Law, and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is a member of the Massachusetts State Bar and the Rhode Island State Bar. Prior to becoming a law librarian, Nicole practiced real estate law. Her areas of interest are mass incarceration, access to justice, law library leadership, and engagement.