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Debate
Erupts
at N.J.
Law
School
After
White
Student
Quotes
Racial
Slur
Tracey
Tully
Bryan
Anselm
The New
York
Times
NEWARK,
NJ - The
controversy
over the
use of a
racial
slur
that has
embroiled
a public
law
school
in New
Jersey
began
with a
student
quoting
from
case law
during a
professor’s
virtual
office
hours.
The
first-year
student
at
Rutgers
Law
School
in
Newark,
who is
white,
repeated
a line
from a
1993
legal
opinion,
including
the
epithet,
when
discussing
a case.
What
followed
has
jolted
the
state
institution,
unleashing
a
polarizing
debate
over the
constitutional
right to
free
speech
on
campus
and the
power of
a
hateful
word at
a moment
of
intense
national
introspection
over
race,
equity
and
systemic
bias.
The
tension
comes at
a time
of
heightened
sensitivity
to
offensive
words on
college
and law
school
campuses,
where
recent
uses of
slurs by
professors
during
lessons
have
resulted
in
discipline
and
dismissal.
In
early
April,
in
response
to the
incident,
a group
of Black
first-year
students
at
Rutgers
Law
began
circulating
a
petition
calling
for the
creation
of a
policy
on
racial
slurs
and
formal,
public
apologies
from the
student
and the
professor,
Vera
Bergelson.
“At
the
height
of a
‘racial
reckoning,’
a
responsible
adult
should
know not
to use a
racial
slur
regardless
of its
use in a
1993
opinion,”
states
the
petition,
which
has been
signed
by law
school
students
and
campus
organizations
across
the
country.
“We
vehemently
condemn
the use
of the
N-word
by the
student
and the
acquiescence
of its
usage,”
the
petition
says.
Bergelson,
59, has
said
that she
did not
hear the
word
spoken
during
the
videoconference
session,
which
three
students
attended
after a
criminal
law
class,
and
would
have
corrected
the
student
if she
had.
Soon
after
the
professor’s
office
hours in
late
October,
a white
classmate
contacted
the
student
who
quoted
the
epithet
to say
that she
should
have
avoided
using
it.
The
student,
a
middle-aged
woman
studying
law as a
second
career,
offered
her
phone
number
to
continue
the
discussion
and also
arranged
for a
lengthy
conversation
with the
third
student,
her
lawyer
said.
One
of the
students
later
told a
Black
classmate;
a
recording
of the
meeting,
which is
no
longer
accessible,
was
discovered
online
and
shared.
Black
students
from the
class
who were
offended
by the
slur
expressed
their
concerns
to
another
professor,
who
alerted
a dean,
David
Lopez,
soon
after
the
incident,
several
officials
said.
Bergelson
said she
was
never
told
about
her
students’
objections,
learning
of them
only
after
the
petition
surfaced
April 6,
five
months
later.
Within
days,
she
said,
she
convened
a
meeting
with the
criminal
law
class
and
other
first-year
students
to
discuss
the
incident
and to
offer an
apology.
The
student,
who has
not been
publicly
identified,
also
apologized
during
the
meeting.
“I
wish I
could go
back in
time to
that
office
hour and
confront
it
directly,”
Bergelson
said in
an
interview.
Lopez
has
apologized
for
failing
to
address
the
students’
concerns
promptly,
a delay
that
contributed
to their
frustration
and was
cited in
the
petition.
But that
has done
little
to quell
the
tension.
Recent
faculty
meetings
—
including
one held
the day
after a
police
officer
was
convicted
of
killing
George
Floyd —
have
been
marked
by
heated
exchanges,
participants
said. A
racial
healing
session
that was
organized
by
students
was
filled
with raw
emotion.
The
student
who
uttered
the slur
is
distraught,
professors
said,
and has
enlisted
the help
of a
lawyer
known
for her
expertise
in free
speech
and due
process.
On
Friday,
a
faculty
meeting
included
a
discussion
about
whether
to
voluntarily
bar
racial
epithets
from
being
spoken
in
class,
even if
citing
legal
documents
verbatim,
as Lopez
has
requested
be done.
“I
share
the
views of
several
of our
faculty
members
who
understand
and
express
to their
students
that
this
language
is
hateful
and can
be
triggering,
even in
the
context
of a
case,
and ask
that it
not be
used,”
he wrote
in an
email to
the
school
community
soon
after
the
petition
began
circulating.
Among
the
professors
who have
signed a
statement
in
support
of
Bergelson
and the
student
are some
of the
school’s
most
prominent
faculty
members,
including
John
Farmer
Jr., a
former
New
Jersey
attorney
general,
and
Ronald
K. Chen,
the
state’s
onetime
public
advocate.
Both are
former
deans of
Rutgers
Law
School.
“Although
we all
deplore
the use
of
racist
epithets,”
said
Gary L.
Francione,
a law
professor
who also
signed
the
statement,
“the
idea
that a
faculty
member
or law
student
cannot
quote a
published
court
decision
that
itself
quotes a
racial
or other
otherwise
objectionable
word as
part of
the
record
of the
case is
problematic
and
implicates
matters
of
academic
freedom
and free
speech.”
The
petition
organizers
said
they
were
busy
with
final
exams
and
would
have no
immediate
comment
beyond
the
petition.
Any
public
use of a
racial
epithet
can
carry a
risk of
steep
professional
consequences.
The
head of
the
journalism
department
at
Central
Michigan
University
was
fired
last
year
after
using
the same
slur
when
quoting
from a
lawsuit.
An Emory
University
law
school
professor
was
placed
on
administrative
leave
for more
than a
year
after
using
the word
in
discussions
with
students
about
race.
Rutgers
officials
willing
to talk
openly
about
their
opposition
to the
students’
demands
have
said
that the
school,
as a
public
institution,
has a
greater
obligation
to
safeguard
students’
and
teachers’
First
Amendment
right to
free
speech.
“I
don’t
think
the Law
School
should
have
rules
that are
stricter
than the
Constitution
of the
United
States,”
said
Dennis
M.
Patterson,
a
professor.
Lopez
and his
co-dean,
Kimberly
Mutcherson,
said in
a
statement
that the
discussion
underway
had
nothing
to do
with
“stifling
academic
freedom,
ignoring
the
First
Amendment,
or
banning
words.”
Rather,
they
said, it
was
about
“how
best to
create
classroom
environments
in which
all of
our
students
feel
seen,
heard,
valued
and
respected.”
The
controversy
began on
Oct. 28,
after a
criminal
law
class
all
first-year
students
are
required
to take.
In
discussing
the
circumstances
under
which a
criminal
defendant
could be
held
liable
for
crimes
committed
by his
co-conspirators,
the
student
repeated
a quote
from a
defendant
that
appeared
in an
opinion
written
by a
former
state
Supreme
Court
judge,
Alan B.
Handler.
“He
said, um
— and
I’ll use
a racial
word,
but it’s
a
quote,”
the
student
said,
according
to a
summary
of the
incident
written
by
professors.
“He
says,
‘I’m
going to
go to
Trenton
and come
back
with my
[expletive]s.”
Samantha
Harris,
the
lawyer
representing
the
woman,
said the
school
would be
abdicating
its
responsibility
to train
lawyers
if it
encouraged
professors
to avoid
epithets
in all
contexts.
“When
you’re
an
attorney,
you hear
all
kinds of
horrible
things,”
said
Harris,
a former
fellow
at FIRE,
the
Foundation
for
Individual
Rights
in
Education.
“You
represent
people
who have
said
horrible
things,
who have
done
horrible
things,”
she
said.
“You
can’t
guarantee
a world
free of
offensive
language.”
Adam
Scales,
a Black
professor
at
Rutgers
Law who
has
signed
the
statement
of
support
for
Bergelson,
said he
opposed
even
voluntary
limits
on
speech.
But he
said the
number
of his
colleagues
who
believe
racial
epithets
should
never be
spoken,
regardless
of the
context,
is “not
insignificant.”
Using
euphemisms
like
“N-word”
to avoid
the
racial
slur, he
said,
obfuscates
its
repugnant
history.
“There
is
something
extremely
antiseptic
about
the term
‘N-word,’”
he said.
“There
is
something
that
softens
the
impact.”
The
faculty
discussions,
held by
videoconference,
have
been
fraught,
he said.
“I
can’t
imagine
a less
hospitable
setting
than a
100-person
Zoom
call to
discuss
racism,”
he said.
“It’s a
demoralizing
time for
everyone
involved.”
Bergelson,
who
emigrated
from
Moscow
as an
adult,
said her
belief
that
slurs
rooted
in
racism,
bigotry
or
misogyny
should
be
avoided
in class
stems
from her
personal
history.
Her
grandmother,
she
said,
was a
journalist
who was
executed
in 1950
by the
Stalin
regime
for
associating
with the
Jewish
Anti-Fascist
Committee.
Another
relative
was
executed
in 1952.
Bergelson
said her
mother,
who was
16 when
her own
mother
died,
never
fully
recovered
from the
trauma.
“I
certainly
grew up
in the
shadow
of this
tragedy,”
she
said. “I
am very
sensitive
to how a
word can
trigger
painful
episodes.
I would
never
use the
words in
class.”
Still,
she
said,
other
professors
and
students
should
be free
to make
their
own
choices.
This
article
originally
appeared
in The
New York
Times.
©
2021 The
New York
Times
Company
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