Law school snubs White scholars in favor of unqualified Black women

For the last twelve years, Northwestern Law School has been enforcing an affirmative action mandate which excludes highly qualified White men from faculty positions in favor of Black women even when they are unfit for the job, according to a new lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday by America First Legal and other attorneys on behalf of Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (FASORP). The complaint alleges that Northwestern is violating last year's US Supreme Court ruling which effectively outlawed affirmative action.

White male scholars are blacklisted

Eugene Volokh is a renowned constitutional law scholar, having started his career by clerking for the late US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. He has taught at UCLA Law School for 30 years and his works have been cited by the US Supreme Court and other scholars. He is more accomplished than most of the faculty members at Northwestern Law School.

When Volokh contacted the university to be considered for a faculty position, then-Dean Dan Rodriguez blocked his appointment because Volokh is a White man. According to other faculty members, Professor Volokh would have been hired had he been of a different color or gender. The legal scholar was not invited to interview and his candidacy was not presented to the faculty for a vote.

Like Volokh, Ernie Young is a highly published and respected legal expert. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1993, he went on to clerk for former US Supreme Court Justice David Souter. He currently holds a distinguished position at Duke University and is famous for his scholarly contributions.

But Professor Young was also blocked by Northwestern for being a White man.

This discriminatory practice continued with Northwestern Associate Dean Sarah Lawsky. When the appointment committee unanimously voted to hire Professor Ilan Wurman, for example, Lawsky explicitly vetoed the decision because he is a White male. Even Wurman’s homosexuality, which is considered an advantage to supporters of diversity over merit, was not enough to make up for his color and sex.

Instead, Northwestern has been hiring Black women even when poorly qualified.

Destiny Peery

Destiny Peery is a Black woman who graduated from Northwestern at the bottom of her class. Faculty members opposed hiring her because of her poor academic record and expressed concerns that she was incapable of “producing serious scholarship.”

Then-Dean Rodriguez, however, threatened to withhold bonuses from any faculty member who attempted to block Peery’s appointment. Opposition quickly faded, and Peery was hired for a tenure-track position.

Three years later, when it came time for Peery’s tenure review, it became clear that she had hardly contributed to academic articles and added little to the legal field. But Janice Nadler, a White faculty member, wanted to advance Peery on the basis of her being a Black woman. Nadler therefore falsely told other faculty members that Peery had published several new papers when those papers were really from Peery’s work before she was hired.

When Nadler’s colleagues discovered her deception, Nadler and Rodriguez excused Peery by blaming themselves. The university had given Peery too many speaking engagements, they claimed, which left her little time for writing.

Peery was then appointed to the post of associate professor.

Two years later, Peery had still failed to make any significant scholarly contributions that could justify tenure. When she was “gently” told not to seek tenure, she accused Northwestern of racism and sexism.

Candice Player

Candice Player, a Black woman, also had few accomplishments when she applied to a faculty position at Northwestern. As with Peery, Rodriguez successfully coerced appointment committee members to hire Player by threatening to withhold their bonuses.

Player struggled in her job. She admitted to colleagues that she did not understand the material she was teaching and had a hard time answering students’ questions. When it came time to administer an exam, Player was either too lazy or incapable of writing her own questions, so she plagiarized from a public source which the students knew. She left the school in 2019.

Jamelia Morgan

Jamelia Morgan had only been teaching law for four years when she applied for a position at Northwestern. She had graduated from UC-Irvine, a low-ranked law school. However, because she was a Black woman, Northwestern so desperately wanted Morgan on the team that the dean offered her a $900,000 budget to start a “Center for Racial and Disability Justice.” No other faculty member had been given such a budget in recent history, no matter how accomplished.

In the two years since she was hired, the Center for Racial and Disability Justice has held only two small events. The center has contributed nothing to academia.

Administrators knew the mandate was illegal

Dean Rodriguez and his successors apparently knew what they were doing was illegal because they forbade faculty members from discussing the mandate openly.

“Dean Rodriguez knew that this discriminatory hiring edict was illegal and would expose the university to lawsuits,” says the complaint. “So he ordered the Northwestern faculty to never discuss candidates for hiring over the faculty listserv, and explicitly mentioned litigation risk as his reason for banning listserv discussions of faculty candidates. Rodriguez’s successors as dean, including Kimberly Yuracko and Hari M. Osofsky, have continued his policy of banning listserv discussions of faculty candidates.”

Maintaining a facade of non-discrimination

Northwestern Law School made six offers In the last hiring cycle, none of them to White men. The year before, nine offers were made, just one of them to a White man. The year before that, Northwestern made two offers to White men, though one of them was a “sham.” The school extended an offer to Professor Jacob Goldin knowing there was “zero chance” he would accept, having already been offered a position by Stanford University and the University of Chicago. Both schools rank higher than Northwestern.

“The Northwestern faculty knew full well that Goldin would reject their offer. But they extended him an offer for the sole purpose of making their policy of discriminating against white men seem somewhat less obvious to someone who simply examines the numbers,” the complaint explained. 

The other White man who received an offer, Ari Glogower, only received it due to a scarcity of female and/or minority candidates in the area of tax law.

Northwestern has also been excluding White men from deanships, favoring women for the role. 

Students discriminate for law review

The student editors of Northwestern University Law Review also heavily discriminate against White men, even while they claim otherwise.

Law review editors have rejected high-quality articles from White male students in favor of lower quality ones written by Black people, women, homosexuals, and transgenders. Instead of basing acceptance of articles on academic performance and writing competitions, the editors rely on “personal statements” that showcase the students’ race, gender, and sexual preference.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, Northwestern’s Law Review published an issue consisting of articles solely from Black female students. No submissions from other genders or races were accepted, though editors did not reveal this to readers.

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