Fired dean made 'pious phrases policy - Barbara Bader Aldave, former dean of the Catholic St. Mary's Law School, San Antonio, TX

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 12, 1997 by Pamela Schaeffer

Suppose, as the first female dean of a law school in Texas, you take its Catholic mission statement seriously: Run the school with a commitment to justice, dramatically increase minority enrollment and develop legal clinics to serve the region's poor and marginalized residents. What happens when you try to set a law school apart by capitalizing on its Catholic identity?

If you ask Barbara Bader Aldave, she'll tell you conflicts develop and you get fired. She did, after nine years of following such a course at St. Mary's Law School in San Antonio. Aldave, one of only a dozen or so female law school deans in the country, will leave her post on May 31. A search committee will be looking for a dean who can unite a divided faculty and placate trustees.

Recently some 200 supporters turned out on 24 hours notice for a town hall meeting to try to convince St. Mary s president, Marianist Fr. John Moder, to grant Aldave a reprieve. Afterward, Moder issued a memo to the "law school community" saying that he intends to continue Aldave's programs but remains committed to finding a new dean who can bring about "healing" at a school where dissension is seemingly on the rise. Aldave's critics say ongoing strife has resulted from her philosophy and leadership style.

During Aldave's nine-year tenure, her critics have grown as minority enrollment climbed. This fall, minorities made up nearly 40 percent of the total number of entering students, three times the percentage when Aldave was appointed dean in 1989. Alternately described as prophet and zealot, she established the Center for Legal and Social Justice, a collection of legal and human rights clinics where students hone their legal skills by helping immigrants, battered women and others traditionally barred from legal services for lack of knowledge or money.

"A fungus of neo-paganism and neo-humanism," cried former dean Ernest Raba in a memo to alumni. One of Aldave's most vocal critics, Raba headed the law school for some 35 years. Meanwhile Aldave has said publicly that her approach to law and leadership is inspired by Mary, the mother of Jesus. Her daughter, Anna, is director of Mary's Pence, a Washington-based organization that collects and distributes funds for Catholic women's ministries. Emphasis is on those that serve "poor and powerless women in the Americas" and are denied funding from traditional sources.

Earlier this year Barbara Aldave, 58, received the Woman of Justice Award from Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby. In September, the American Bar Association named St. Mary's "Public Interest Law School of the Year," citing its public service programs.

Advocacy at the school on behalf of eliminating land mines has had international impact, and even some of Aldave's critics acknowledge that she has significantly increased the school's national visibility. She has become a nationally known advocate of affirmative action, defending programs against attacks in Texas and California. Despite warnings that critics considered her too outspoken, even brash, she publicly criticized a federal court in Texas, calling the Hopwood v. Texas decision "bad law." The ruling invalidated an affirmative action program at the University of Texas and, according to Aldave, was in conflict with rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.

If such activism weren't enough to cause her problems in Texas and at a school formerly known as a conservative training ground for buttoned-up corporate attorneys, St. Mary's bar passage rates -- the traditional measure of a law school's success -- declined sharply in 1996. Fodder for her enemies, they fell to 71 percent, down from 90 percent in 1991. The 1997 rate was slightly better, 75 percent, raising the rating to seventh statewide.

Raba, whose deanship spanned some 35 years, has accused her in the San Antonio press of conducting a "social experiment" at the school's expense. "I don't think she should be a law school dean because it's not a sociology course," he told the San Antonio Express-News. Raba could not be reached by NCR for comment.

Aldave is unmoved. "This was the most reactionary law school in, I think, the United States, when I came," where students were expected to adhere to a strict set of rules, including a dress code, she said. "I saw no reason for a state like Texas, which now has nine law schools, to have a reactionary Catholic law school as one of them.

"When I applied for the job, the school was not in very good shape financially or academically. But I thought it had real promise if it played to its strength." She said she had noted that the school's mission was "to teach people the value of justice and to carry out the Catholic mission of service to the world."

"I took all the pious phrases seriously and said I would apply them," she said. "That's what I did. Most people have been supportive, except for a few reactionaries who opposed me tooth and nail from the first day, and a group on the faculty who were supportive at first but later said, `We want change, but not this much.'"