Dean Pushing Tainted Law Resigns. Demoted To General Faculty

If you have a garden, you know that weeds are a problem. When you want to get rid of a weed, you either have to pull it out down to the roots or, in some way, treat it so that the root is destroyed. If you just cut it off at ground level, it will definitely grow back.

The Penn State Dickinson Law Department had a very high-profile weed; in fact, this weed was the acting dean, and I’m not sure the university did all that was necessary to eliminate the negative effect that she brought to the program.

On Friday, Danielle Conway resigned from her position as the Dean of Penn State Dickinson Law. The resignation came two days after one of her former students, David Blackman, testified before Congress that he left the law school over a mandatory anti-racism class that was required for all first-year students to "acknowledge the reality of systemic racism."

Conway, who also leads the Association of American Law Schools, created the class in 2020, so there is no telling how much damage she has done or will continue to do with her woke rhetoric. At Penn State, she will remain on the law school’s faculty, which may prove to be an unwise decision.

For his part, Blackman deserves a great deal of thanks for exposing this poisonous pill that was most assuredly tainting the thought process of the law students at this university. Blackman told the Washington Free Beacon that Conway’s departure is “a necessary acknowledgment” of the damage she caused.

“The law school shifted away from traditional, objective legal training in favor of forced ideological orthodoxy. This erosion of professional neutrality hurts the legal academy, the bar, and every student forced to comply.”

He then added that Penn State should “take the logical next step” and eliminate the required course.

The Free Beacon was instrumental in Conway’s departure. In May, they reported that the school's objective was to use the course to expand the “employment opportunities” for “underrepresented” candidates. That report prompted a civil rights complaint that was filed with three federal agencies by the conservative nonprofit Protect the Public's Trust. It rightly claims that the plan violates Titles IV and VII of the Civil Rights Act, amid ongoing criticism of Penn State's law school for various anti-racism initiatives, including Conway’s mandatory course for first-year students.

Another report from the Free Beacon included audio from the mandatory first-year course titled "Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws." In this course, speakers claimed that the justice system is designed to "keep black people in their place" and urged students to "dismantle systems that racialize, subordinate, and oppress."

The complaint reads:

"It is discrimination to force white students to reflect on their perceived wrongs with a goal of them having to reshape their views and behaviors. It is discrimination to hire with a preference for having lower-qualified teachers and staff of a certain race over higher-qualified teachers and staff of certain other races."

Conway, the executive director of the law school’s Antiracist Development Institute, never missed a session of the class.

What Blackman did took guts. When he requested an exemption from the course, a committee convened by Conway denied the request.

In his testimony to Congress, Blackman explained:

“Faced with the choice of completing my degree in a system that demanded my intellectual submission, or walking away to maintain my integrity, I chose the latter. I withdrew from Penn State Dickinson Law after one semester, forfeited my scholarship, and returned to Texas to pursue my master’s degree.”

Blackman's testimony was presented to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during a hearing focused on the American Bar Association's accreditation standards, which stipulate that law schools must educate students on "bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism."

Blackman made a valid argument that law schools use these standards to justify “ideological programming,” and he warned that what’s taught in law school eventually filters into law.

“The students sitting in these classrooms today are the prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges of tomorrow. If they are taught that the law is merely a tool for racial retribution, that the First Amendment is conditional, and that due process is an obstacle to ‘equity,’ the American justice system as we know it will not survive.”

The left's corruption of the law is the reason we see so many ridiculous decisions being made in courtrooms across the country. Light sentences for career criminals that require little to no jail time. How many times are we destined to hear about a thug who committed murder who had been arrested fifty previous times?

The infiltration of these woke standards into the practice of law is detrimental to the very framework of our justice system. These delusions can creep into any profession; think of what it would do to the medical profession if those professionals decided to redefine the Hippocratic Oath to conform to their woke standards.

Democrats are not only radical in all of their core beliefs, but they are now embracing communism. They are a destructive force that is hiding in plain sight, and their newest obsession will only make their efforts to force mainstream Americans to accept their distorted views more intense.

I fear that by keeping Conway on as a member of the faculty, Penn State’s change was only aesthetic. They wouldn’t be the first university to fake real change and continue doing what they were doing, even if it violates the law and citizens' rights.