DeanWuBlog

Communications

One of the most difficult aspects of the role as Dean is striking an appropriate balance in serving as the public face of the institution, especially with regard to subjects that are controversial, events that present a crisis, and criticism of decision-making. There is a new norm emerging, ironically perhaps due to technology such as blogging, of heightened public expectations of not only transparency in our operations but also immediacy of communications. I have tried as much as possible to be open as well as open-minded, to ensure I am accessible to our stakeholders as well as engaged with them, and to encourage everyone else with whom I work to do the same.

Yet I know I must to some extent maintain discretion, even -- indeed especially -- in the face of requests and demands for information and opinions. From time to time, people ask that I make a statement about a partisan political issue, pending legislation, recent judicial decisions, and so on, or they wonder how we made choices about our institutional policies. Most recently, I am aware there has been quite a bit of activity regarding a candidate for a faculty position who has had a callback interview on campus. This has attracted national media attention.

In many instances, it would be inappropriate for me to speak freely. There are many reasons. In some instances, I hold personal beliefs that are and should remain irrelevant to my work. For example, I don't generally discuss my religious affiliation. I must be sensitive to my responsibilities to the institution, including ensuring its continuing advancement by raising funds but extending beyond that task. If I placed my own views above these duties, I might appeal to some constituency groups but I would lose effectiveness as a Dean overall. In other instances, there are matters that are committed to various officials, and there is a process for deliberation that must be respected. It may be more appropriate for the President of Wayne State University, not the Dean of the Law School, to address some topics, or it may be necessary for me to preside over a democratic process by which the faculty determines our course of action. In these situations, there may be regulations that govern me, privacy considerations with respect to the parties involved, or simply the need for good timing and avoiding premature announcements. As to faculty appointments, I've previously explained in this blog that, as at most law schools, it is the faculty who determine whether to authorize an offer of employment to candidates for a tenured/tenure-track position. The Dean does not vote on these matters; nor does the Associate Dean. I follow a strict policy of not commenting publicly on any pending personnel matters, including consideration of individuals for faculty appointments, and I typically do not even express a position to the faculty on specific applicants.

Our students who are training to join the legal profession should understand these constraints, because members of the bar are required in virtually all contexts to maintain attorney-client confidences. These norms may not be popular with the public at large, but they have proven crucial to the ability to serve in a representative capacity.

So too for a law school dean.

Advice

The most important advice I can offer about law school is this. Give away your television set (and everything else that accompanies it, including the new PlayStation 3). I always offer this suggestion and law students usually believe I am joking. They say they’ll limit themselves to just their favorite shows or they won’t watch during the exam period. They are unwilling to even move the large-screen to the closet and cancel the premium cable subscription.

A television set, if it is plugged in, is too tempting for most people – with few exceptions, we all grew up with multiple hours of television viewing every day and with it on in the background. It is easy to multi-task; it is extraordinarily difficult to multi-task well.

As important as it is to concentrate, my advice – offered in earnest – is also about self-discipline. If you cannot forego reruns of “Friends” for 9 months, you lack the seriousness of purpose required for your legal education.

Thanksgiving

By this time every year, the first year class is usually in the throes of collective panic. I’d like to assure everyone who has started to learn “how to think like a lawyer” but who hasn’t yet experienced an exam on the elements of a negligence action or what constitutes consideration or how to use a 12(b)(6) motion that, just like generations who have succeeded before them, virtually all of you will do fine and still be here next semester. While it would be useful to spend some of the Thanksgiving long weekend studying and outlining and perhaps meeting with your study group, it also would be good for you not only as a law student but also as human being to relax: eat and drink and socialize; watch the Lions game on television; see a movie at the multiplex; begin your holiday shopping; go for a leisurely walk. Indeed, discussing what you have learned – briefly – with your family and friends would be a good means of reviewing it for yourself. A good lawyer can explain the law to a layperson. After all, that is what you will be doing in practice. The majority of your clients will be laypeople.

Professional Background

From time to time, people are curious about my professional background. My career has been dedicated to institutions that have missions.

For nine years, I was a faculty member at Howard University. I was the first Asian American law professor at the school, which, as you likely know, is widely regarded as the leading historically black college/university. I was there by choice, because of my commitment to civil rights and my conviction that I could build bridges in a manner that would not have been possible anywhere else. I was not mistaken. My own life was changed profoundly by my association with Howard University. I could not have written my book, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, had I not had the experiences, the support, and the relationships provided by Howard University.

In addition, I serve as a Trustee of Gallaudet University. With six years of service, I am the seniormost hearing individual on the Board of a unique institution serving deaf and hard-of-hearing persons. I have studied American Sign Language and done everything I can to learn about, and perhaps even become a peripheral member of, Deaf culture. The example of the outgoing president, Dr. I. King Jordan, is what inspired me to pursue my present job as Dean at our Law School. During a difficult transition period on campus, I remain committed to being part of the future of a place that is not only a university but much more.

For several short periods, I taught at Deep Springs College. As an all-male, full-scholarship highly-selective school located on a student-run cattle ranch near Death Valley, it has become known for a vision set by its founder and continued for generations, training some of the most talented young men I have ever met for a life that is engaged in a manner at once intellectual and practical.

Ethics

I write, as every leader with responsibilities to an institution should from time to time, to remind all of us -- myself included -- of the importance of ensuring we always maintain the highest ethical standards in our day-to-day operations. All of us should make efforts to identify and prevent potential waste and fraud. The government, the press, and the general public are increasingly giving critical scrutiny to the operations of non-profit institutions, including universities. I’d like to ensure everything we do not only follows best practices, but also does do in a demonstrable manner.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you would like to bring to my attention improvements we can make. Thank you very much.

What a Dean Does: Admissions

In this second installment of “What a Dean Does,” I’ll address the admissions process. Perhaps the most important point to make about this subject is “What a Dean Does Not Do,” which is make decisions as to which applicants are accepted and which applicants are rejected. As is customary, I try to maintain a strict separation between our many activities and our choices about the entering class. Almost all law school deans follow this best practice, because otherwise this high-stakes decision-making would be, or would appear to be, unfair. Furthermore, because of the number of interested parties with whom we come into contact, we might well be subjected to inappropriate lobbying. The President of Wayne State University, Dr. Irvin D. Reid, also respects the autonomy of the law school as to these matters. He does not intervene in these matters.

Of course, I do receive references for specific individuals from time to time. Typically, I pass along these recommendations, with limited additional commentary, to the individuals who actually do the make decisions. That would be the Admissions Office, which is supervised by Assistant Dean for Recruitment and Admissions Linda Fowler Sims (linda.sims@wayne.edu) and Director of Admissions Marcia McDonald (marcia.mcdonald@wayne.edu). Both of them are full-time professionals with extensive experience in the area. They make the initial decisions, and they have terminal authority with respect to both the most highly-credentialed applicants and the least well-credentialed applicants.

Yet the authority of the Admissions Office is only delegated to them pursuant to our admissions policy. The actual source of authority is the faculty as a whole. It is the faculty by and large that sets our admissions policy. I am involved in those deliberations at the more general level.

There is an important concept of shared governance – similar to the system of checks and balances established by the Constitution for our federal government – that guides our policy-making. Like almost all institutions of higher education, we try our best to live up to an ideal of democracy in which it is the voting members of the full-time faculty who make the most important decisions about our policies. As Dean, it is my responsibility to execute those decisions. (I’ll discuss shared governance in greater detail in another posting.) So I also am involved in the ongoing effort to improve our admissions procedures, whether it is implementing on-line applications, reducing processing time, generating behind-the-scenes efficiencies, increasing the size of the pool and the level of yield, and so on.

Turning back to decisions as to the individual applicants in our pool, that is actually done by an Admissions Committee of five persons. During the summer, I appoint many committees, consisting primarily of faculty members, and under our by-laws with student representatives in many cases, along with administrators who serve ex officio (i.e., without a vote). This year, the Admisions Committee is chaired by Professor Janet Findlater. The members are Professors Jocelyn Benson, Tony Dillof, David Moss, Diana Pratt. They have a heavy workload. The discretion exercised by us as an institution is at an operational level exercised by the Admissions Committee as they review the files of individual applicants.

Alumni and students, and all of our supporters, can play a valuable role in the admissions process. They can encourage students to consider legal education, promote Wayne State University as a choice, write letters of recommendation, explain the process, conduct informal tours, make introductions to the Admissions personnel, and persuade people who have been offered a seat in the incoming class to take it.

Once anyone has been admitted, I would be pleased to meet him/her. Please feel free to contact me directly if you have been accepted, or know someone who has been accepted, and we can discuss the many reasons to come here.

Proposition 2

As Dean of Wayne State University Law School, I know that I am here only because of affirmative action.

Although I grew up in Detroit, when I left in 1984 I had no intention of ever coming back. It was not until I testified in the trial of the Grutter case that I realized the Motor City itself was coming back. I had the honor of serving as an expert witness in that important case, before it reached the Supreme Court – which ruled in 2003 that diversity was a “compelling state interest” – and when I returned downtown I saw that it was once again a place of opportunity and optimism. My role in the case was modest: I was asked to explain how Asian Americans benefited from efforts to ensure inclusion and to refute the erroneous claim that Asian Americans as a group somehow are an example against the programs.

To be sure, I had had doubts about the effectiveness and the justice of using such volatile factors as race and gender in decision-making, regardless of how laudable the reasons. It was through research and deliberation, reviewing the many studies that were produced as well as examining actual processes in use, that I became convinced of what Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote: “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. . . Access to legal education (and thus the legal profession) must be inclusive of talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity, so that all members of our heterogeneous society may participate in the educational institutions that provide the training and education necessary to succeed in America.”

Yet my participation in the Michigan litigation changed my life as I never would have expected. It was then that I realized I had a duty to my hometown to participate in its renaissance. If I meant what I said and wrote, I should be willing to undertake the difficult work of turning words into action. Someone who says he stands for civil rights and civic responsibilities must take a stand someplace that is not academic and abstract.

And so it was that twenty years after departing, I was eager to be considered for the office I was fortunate to be offered. During a recent discussion about Proposition 2, I was asked by an audience member whether I thought I had obtained my job through affirmative action.

The individual who made the inquiry mentioned that he was interested in attending law school, and it was evident he had considered how best to ask the question as a lawyer conducting cross-examination might: if I said yes, he wanted to claim I had unfairly displaced someone white who was better qualified; if I said no, he wanted to claim there was no need to consider diversity. There is a better question, however, that transforms our dialogue: perhaps I was qualified, but was taken seriously only thanks to a willingness to consider a more diverse range of possibilities.

After all, whatever my merits, I didn’t look like any law school dean anybody had ever seen before -- literally. When I was nominated to be a law school dean, there were no Asian American law school deans anywhere, and there had been no person of color serving as a dean ever in the history of Wayne State University Law School. Even though I certainly believe I was qualified, I would be naïve if I failed to recognize I was unconventional in numerous respects. I taught at a historically black institution of higher education, had experience primarily in clinical education, and was quite young.

My academic work also has been made possible through interaction with people of many backgrounds on an equal basis, and I would not have met these key individuals (nor would they have met me) without effort. It would not have happened automatically or naturally, for the patterns of our lives remain segregated even if we do not intend them to be so. It is the legacy of history, the habits of mind, the privileges that pass unnoticed, and a myriad of other factors that prevent us from making good on ideals we claim to share about integration.

It should come as no surprise to anybody with whom I have worked over the past two and half a years, then, that I am saddened by the outcome of our election. I cannot imagine, as Dean, welcoming an entering class to the law school that was virtually all-white, or presiding over a faculty meeting with only token numbers of African Americans, Latinos, and other persons of color. Nor do I suppose that as a public urban institution we are fulfilling our role of offering access to higher education and the justice system if we graduate a handful of racial minorities or if women are absent from senior leadership positions. I have disappointed myself that we cannot seem to do better in recruitment and retention of students and faculty.

Nonetheless, I take heart in the good will of the people of our great state. I know from conversations with many people who held every conceivable opinions about Proposition 2 that almost to a person they agreed that it was important for us to continue to be welcoming in a meaningful manner to people regardless of skin color or gender. Time and again, supporters of the measure assured opponents of it that they, too, wished to have more than a rhetoric of belonging, that they would dedicate their energies toward achieving a reality of equality.

Proposition 2 is not as simple as it might seem, as is the case with most laws. We will need to engage in deliberation about how best to proceed, ensuring we are complying with applicable laws. I expect we will have much to do, the administrators and the faculty, not to mention our alumni and our current students, following traditions of academic freedom and shared governance. My assurances are not enough; let us be judged, especially if we expect to lead, by our actions.

The challenge for us, as it has always been and likely will remain, is to determine how best to progress on a vision of a diverse democracy.

Recent Activities

Over the past few weeks, I have been to several other institutions of higher education throughout this great state. I travel often to advance our Law School, and I especially like seeing other campuses. On most trips, I try to do as much as possible: visiting with alumni and other supporters to cultivate them and serve as a steward of our important relationships; meeting with prospective employers to explain the many reasons they should be considering students as potential hires; hosting events for undergraduate students who are considering legal careers to ensure they are considering coming here to begin their legal education; and participating in activities that raise our public profile.

My most recent journeys have brought me to the Upper Peninsula. I had pledged to visit the UP, because we are a state institution and it is important to acknowledge that this state has two peninsulas. I had actually promised some graduates that I would come when there was snow on the ground, and I am delighted to report that indeed there was an early snowfall and accumulation was still visible. I delivered talks for the general public at both Michigan Technological University in Houghton and Northern Michigan University in Marquette, gave guest lectures to large classes, met with pre-law student groups and scholarship students, among numerous other activities over the course of three days. I also represented Wayne State University as a whole at an alumni luncheon, which the attendees appreciated greatly. It is not often – not often enough – that we visit the Upper Peninsula. I would like to ensure that at least every other year our admissions recruiters make it to the UP.

In addition, I was invited to Central Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. Both of these fine schools, like MTU and NMU, are feeder institutions for us. Every year, we see a number of applicants, and a few matriculants, who have done their undergraduate work there. It is apparent that other law schools are doing their best to attract undergraduates from all over Michigan.

I am convinced that our more regular presence will persuade a greater number of talented students from these schools to come here. Our success depends on being competitive throughout our geographic market and expanding the scope of our vision.

Faculty

There are many types of professors whom we are privileged to have associated with the Law School. Our full-time faculty includes individuals who are tenured or tenure-track. Tenure is a tradition which by ensuring job security enhances academic freedom; the ideal of tenure is that a professor who has earned it will be able to pursue independent research protected from arbitrariness and bias. Tenure-track faculty are individuals who are eligible for tenure and progressing toward it, much as an attorney might be on the partnership track at a law firm. At Wayne State University, tenure- track faculty typically have six years to attain tenure. At most institutions of higher education, individuals who are not granted tenure usually no longer have employment.

There are several ranks among tenured/tenure-track faculty. They are, in order, Assistant Professor; Associate Professor; and Professor. In most, but not all, instances, an individual is promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor simultaneously with the grant of tenure (this is not true at all schools). Some of the most senior faculty also hold an endowed chair, meaning a donor has provided funds that generate income to supplement the regular faculty salary; or an honor such as the University Professor designation.

There also are full-time faculty who have different roles. Clinical faculty are employed on long-term contracts, and the American Bar Association requires they have job security that is similar to tenure though it need not be identical to tenure. Legal Research & Writing instructors also are employed on a contractual basis.

The hiring of full-time faculty is conducted by the full-time faculty. A supermajority of two-thirds is needed to approve of an offer. Neither the Dean nor the Associate Dean votes, and in most instances neither the Dean nor the Associate Dean states a view about a candidate during the deliberations, which are conducted in executive session.

At this time, none of the Assistant Deans is a faculty member. They are administrators appointed by the Dean.

Our part-time faculty are called "Adjunct Professors." They are talented members of the bench and the bar (in rare instances, retired) who have particular expertise that benefits our students. Many of them teach specialized courses or use a pedagogy oriented toward practice rather than theory. Many, but not all, also are alumni -- decisions about adjunct faculty are made solely on the basis of academics and without regard to whether an alumnus is a supporter of the Law School. They are approved by the full-time faculty and supervised by the Associate Dean. The American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools monitor the use of adjuncts and they prefer law schools rely on full-time faculty and restrict the total number of adjunct faculty.