Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series: Teaching Diversity Skills in Bar Tested Classes
Intentionally teaching diversity skills in bar tested classes requires professors to navigate a variety of potential obstacles like uneven casebook coverage of topics/perspectives, limited class time to devote to important issues, and possible student resistance in discussions. This session will feature panelists from across the curriculum focusing on how to successfully integrate diversity skills and diverse perspectives into the law school classroom.
This event is co-sponsored by Roger Williams University School of Law, City University of New York School of Law, George Washington University Law School, Berkeley Law, and JURIST.
4:00 - 5:00 PM EST
In 2021, RWU Law began sponsoring an ongoing Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series in collaboration with CUNY School of Law and JURIST. Each previous installment has been attended by hundreds of legal education professionals from across the country.
Meet the Speakers
Montré Denise Carodine earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Louisiana Tech University and her J.D., cum laude, from Tulane Law School where she was on the Senior Editorial Board of the Tulane Law Review. After graduating from law school, Professor Carodine clerked for the Honorable Carl E. Stewart of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She then practiced as a litigation associate with Fulbright & Jaworski in Houston, Texas, from 2001-2004. She was on the law faculty at Washington and Lee University from 2004 to 2007. She has been on the Alabama Law faculty since 2007, where she is currently Professor of Law and has previously served as an associate dean.
Professor Carodine teaches Evidence, Law & Popular Culture, Critical Race Feminism, and Major Race Trials at University of Alabama School of Law. She has published several articles in top law journals, including the Indiana Law Journal, the UC Davis Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review, and the Maryland Law Review. She has also published several book chapters.
Professor Carodine has provided commentary numerous national and local media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, NPR, USA Today, and AL.com, among others. She is a graduate of Birmingham’s FBI Citizen’s Academy, has chaired the American Association of University Women’s Selected Professions Panel and is currently a member of the Alabama Access to Justice Commission.
Jeremiah A. Ho is Associate Professor at UMass Law where he teaches Contracts I & II, Trusts & Estates, and Remedies. His research focuses on topics relating to law and inequality, mostly with respect to sexuality/gender, race, and culture. In addition, he also writes extensively on legal education, methodology, and theory. Professor Ho’s articles have appeared in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, The Georgetown Law Journal Online, the Journal of Legal Education, the Utah Law Review, the Kentucky Law Journal, the American University Journal on Gender, Social Policy, and the Law, the U.C. Davis Business Law Journal, and others. As a regular contributor to the Humans Rights at Home Blog, Professor Ho’s shorter pieces on sexuality and race often garner mentioning by SCOTUS Blog.
In both his scholarship and teaching, Professor Ho’s work has received significant recognition. His scholarship in law and sexuality has earned him a Dukeminier Award, specifically The Ezekiel Webber Prize, from The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. The awards recognize the best in LGBTQIA+ scholarship published in law reviews each year. To recognize Professor Ho’s teaching in the classroom, the University of Massachusetts has awarded him the Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching, a university system-wide teaching prize. At UMass Law specifically, Professor Ho has been named Professor of the Year for a record six times, an award given by students to the most outstanding member of the faculty. And in 2014, Professor Ho was selected for inclusion in Lawyers of Color’s 50 Law Professors Under 50.
Prior to joining UMass Law, Professor Ho taught at Washburn University School of Law. He was the inaugural fellow at the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, co-sponsored by the law schools at Gonzaga University, Washburn University, and the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.
Thea Johnson is a scholar of criminal law and criminal procedure. Her scholarship focuses on the role of plea bargaining in the criminal legal system, including the ways in which stakeholders manipulate the plea process and stretch ethical boundaries to achieve particular outcomes. Her article, “Fictional Pleas,” was selected for inclusion in the Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum and as the runner-up for the 2019 American Association of Law Schools’ Criminal Justice Section Junior Scholars’ Paper Competition. At Rutgers Law, Johnson received the 2022 Greg Lastowka Award for scholarly excellence. She is also the Reporter for the American Bar Association's Plea Bargain Task Force.
Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers Law, Johnson was an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Maine School of Law where she was awarded Law Professor of the Year in 2019 and 2020. She was also a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School, and a public defender with both the Federal Defenders of New York and the Criminal Defense Division of The Legal Aid Society in New York.
Monica Teixeira de Sousa is a Professor of Law at Roger Williams University School of Law where she teaches Property, Family Law, and Race & the Foundations of American Law. Prior to joining the RWU Law faculty in 2022, Monica was a tenured professor at New England Law | Boston where she created and served as the director of the First Generation Students Program. Before her academic career, Professor Teixeira de Sousa was a staff attorney at Rhode Island Legal Services, where she began practicing in 2002 as a Skadden Fellow and created a school-based legal clinic at her former elementary school in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She represented parents and students in school discipline and special education cases, as well as public benefits and eviction defense matters.
Professor Teixeira de Sousa has written and presented on issues of equity and education law and policy. In 2014, she took a sabbatical from academic teaching and worked as a volunteer attorney in the Public Benefits Unit at Rhode Island Legal Services. Her current pro bono work includes volunteering in the Housing Unit at Rhode Island Legal Services through a collaboration with the law school's Feinstein Center for Pro Bono & Experiential Education. Professor Teixeira de Sousa has served as a member of the Rhode Island College Upward Bound Program Alumni Scholarship Committee since 2013. She also serves on the board of directors of both the Cape Verdean American Lawyers Association and the nonprofit Justice at Work. Professor Teixeira de Sousa earned her JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 2002 and her BA from Brown University in 1998.
Mikah Thompson is the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and a Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. She teaches the following courses: Civil Procedure, Evidence, Race and the Law, and Employment Law. Dean Thompson’s research centers on the intersection of evidentiary law and race. She also writes on the pedagogy of legal education with a particular emphasis on techniques for infusing cultural self-awareness into the first-year law school curriculum. Dean Thompson is an affiliate faculty member at the UMKC School of Medicine where she directs a program that educates future physicians and other medical professionals on anti-racism and cultural bias in medicine. Dean Thompson’s awards for her teaching and research efforts include the 2022 Missouri Lawyers Media Diversity and Inclusion Award, the 2021-2022 UMKC Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the 2021 UMKC School of Law Professor of the Year Award, and the 2021 Daniel L. Brenner Faculty Publishing Award.
Dean Thompson is a certified mediator in the states of Kansas and Missouri and frequently provides continuing legal education in the areas of employment law, professional responsibility, implicit bias, and allyship. Since 2019, she has served as a Tri-Chair of the Missouri Supreme Court’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Fairness. She earned her law degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
Meet the Moderator
Nicole P. Dyszlewski is one of the editors of Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom. She currently serves as the Director of Special Programs, Academic Affairs at RWU Law and as an adjunct professor. She received a B.A. from Hofstra University, a J.D. from Boston University School of Law, and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. She is a member of the Massachusetts State Bar and the Rhode Island State Bar. Her areas of interest are mass incarceration, access to justice, and systems of race and gender inequality in law. Nicole was the 2020 recipient of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Volunteer Service Award and the 2015 recipient of the AALL Emerging Leader Award.
Twitter:@LibrariaNicole