'A new mountain to climb': as the new dean of UC-Berkeley's law school, Christopher Edley Jr. plans to continue the civil rights and social justice agenda work for which he has become well known

Black Issues in Higher Education, July 29, 2004 by Ronald Roach

Finally, the future of higher education in California depends upon how the university makes the case to the politicians and the people for its continued greatness, and I hope to be a part of making that case.

BI: UC-Berkeley has been in the news" over the decline of Black and Latino undergraduate admissions. How well is the law school faring with regard to the admissions" of Black and Latino students? What's being done to facilitate outreach efforts to underrepresented minorities?

CEJ: The law school thankfully is holding its own thus far, but I don't take that for granted, and I believe it's going to take a lot of work to get where we want to be, particularly in light of the constraints imposed by Prop 209. The undergraduate situation is different and alarming. The drop of African American admittees this year foreshadows a similar drop with Latinos unless the campus takes aggressive action.

I've already been involved in a couple of discussions and meetings with a group established by the chancellor to brainstorm about strategies to address the problem. So I can tell you that there is very deep passionate commitment on the part of campus leaders with whom I've spoken to deal with this problem. It's also an important early agenda item for the Civil Rights Project because thinking about why the drop has occurred and what strategies might be effective to counteract it are researchable questions. Getting the right answers is crucial because otherwise you may invest energy and resources solving the wrong problem. Is the difficulty with the admissions readers? With the high-school guidance counselors? With the targeting of the recruitment effort? With the image of the school in the minds of students? With the increasing cost of tuition? With some combination of the above? Or with some other factor altogether?

It's important to bear in mind that the precipitous drop at Berkeley is only one element of a developing opportunity crisis in California higher education that runs from the flagship Berkeley campus all the way to the community colleges.

BI: We've seen summer programs from the national medical schools' association aimed at upgrading the academic skills of underrepresented minority undergraduates by reaching out to them as a national pool. Is it possible to develop a national program intended for underrepresented minorities" and disadvantaged students who could benefit from summer programs to boost their skills for law school admissions and the law school experience?

CEJ: Yes, absolutely. I know there are some people looking at that and I just saw a memo that the Law School Admissions Council is interested in exploring that.

I feel some ambivalence about this because it is certainly important to do a range of things to improve the situation in the pipeline, but there are two important caveats. First, the fact that the pipeline is broken does not absolve institutions of their responsibility to pursue excellence by being inclusive. In other words, they should be doing affirmative action until the pipeline is sufficiently repaired and affirmative action is no longer necessary, however long that takes and in the face of whatever impatience there might be from opponents of affirmative action.