Last Dec. 3, after years of attacks on Asian immigrant students, something finally snapped.

Fueled by rumors, a group of students roamed the halls searching for Asian victims until one was attacked in a classroom. Later, about 70 students stormed the cafeteria, where several Asians were beaten. About 35 students pushed past a police officer onto the so-called “Asian floor,” but were turned back. After school, Asians being escorted home were attacked anyway by a mob of youths.

Almost all the attackers were black — but few observers believe the violence was due to racial hatred. Instead, they cite isolation of different groups within the school, certain students’ warped “gangster” values, and for some, simmering resentments over perceived benefits for Asian students.

About 30 Asians were injured that day; seven went to hospitals. Past attacks had been reported to administrators and police, but students say nothing seemed to change.

Ly (pronounced LEE) was in the lunchroom for what he calls “the riot.” Days later, he was followed home from school and punched in the face on his front stoop.

He had arrived from Vietnam two years earlier, speaking nearly no English, the son of poor, uneducated parents. He thought America would be like the Hannah Montana TV episodes he had watched in Vietnam. What he found was closer to The Wire. So he kept his head down, sought silent refuge among his countrymen and tried to make his way through the broken system.

Dec. 3 was a turning point. He realized the system must change — and that he and his fellow immigrants were the ones to make that happen.

Their method? Guided by local activists, and despite reservations from some parents, about 50 Asian students boycotted school for a week.

“Before, I was timid. I didn’t really want to get myself into trouble,” says Ly, 18. Then he realized, “If everybody’s silent, nobody speaks up, the problem keeps going on without being resolved. I feel like I or my friends have to speak up and organize to tell people this is not right.

“We had to fight for it.”

‘Just suffer it’

Duong Ly’s parents, ethnic Chinese who grew up in Vietnam, worked 27 years to grasp the bottom rung of the ladder to American success.

His mother, Phung Mac, attended school through the second grade, when her family ran out of money to pay for more. His father, Tu Ly, made it through the sixth grade. In 1981, they submitted their first paperwork to immigrate to the United States.

“You had to have a certain background to go to school, be in the Communist Party,” Tu Ly says in Cantonese as his son translates. “Your grandparents had to be a party member for you to get into good schools. Otherwise it cost a lot of money to get an education.”

Ly’s parents lived in Ho Chi Minh City, eking out a living selling “pho” noodle soup, rising at 5 a.m. and working in their shop until 9 or 10 at night. All extra money went toward school for Duong (pronounced YUHNG) and his older brother, and fees for immigration paperwork. At times they could not pay their rent and were forced to move, but they always made sure their boys stayed in school.

Ly’s mother developed painful hip problems. Her younger brother, who had already moved to America, sent money to pay for an operation. It was unsuccessful — the doctor said it was “an experiment. If you want a better … operation, you need to pay more money,” she says in Cantonese.

In 2008, after spending about $20,000 on immigration fees, the family was approved and came to Philadelphia. “We finally achieved our wish: freedom,” Tu Ly says. “We finally had a chance for a better education.”

South Philadelphia High looms over an entire city block in a poor section of South Philadelphia long populated by descendants of voyagers from Italy, other European nations and the black American South. Asians and Latinos are now coming in greater numbers. Today, the school is about 70% black and 18% Asian.

During Duong Ly’s first year, there were 45 reports of “dangerous incidents” such as weapons possession or assaults at the school of about 1,000 students, enough to earn a “persistently dangerous” label from the state. There also were 326 reports of lesser crimes such as fighting, threats or robberies. The graduation rate was 48%. Only 16% of students were proficient or better in reading and 8% in math, according to state test results.

Within weeks of starting school, Ly was robbed in the bathroom. His older brother was punched in the face. “Our friends told us, ‘Just suffer it,’” Ly says.

They didn’t report either incident.

‘Discrimination happens’

Duong Ly speaks dispassionately, expressing no racial animosity, when asked to explain how fellow students could commit such vicious attacks.

“Because they live in a violent environment,” he suggests. “Maybe their parents have problems and troubles, so they want to express their anger by violence.”

His father also declines to condemn the attackers. “In Vietnam,” he says, “the original Vietnamese people don’t like us because we are a different ethnicity. People from the countryside who move to the city get discrimination from city people. It’s the same here. They don’t have an understanding about who we are. Discrimination happens in every society.”

About a dozen black students were suspended or expelled after Dec. 3. Their names have been kept secret, and they have not commented publicly.

Some other black students show little sympathy for them. “They’re just hating on other races. They don’t have anything better to do with their lives,” says Tyreke Williams, who graduated last June.

Wali Smith makes no excuses for the attacks, but understands where they come from. A community specialist who holds workshops on anger management and conflict resolution in various schools, he witnessed the Dec. 3 violence.

The South Philly native says blacks have always felt marginalized in the neighborhood dominated by Italians and Irish. Now, some students feel an almost unconscious resentment when they see their Asian counterparts studying on their special second-floor sanctuary, which was established to provide language programs and provide a more welcoming environment.

“Those (black) kids feel the majority of the staff there does not care about their education,” Smith says. “They see these Asian kids come in and be nurtured, and they want that same kind of comfort.”

Then there is a small group of troublemakers with a value system that says, “it’s cool to be gangster,” Smith says. “But really you’re afraid, a scared coward. So you take advantage of weak people.”

“It’s not based on race, it’s based on opportunity,” Smith said of the history of violence against Asians. “If they go to the bathroom and take your money, and you don’t report it, they’ll just keep riding it until the wheels fall off.”

School, community and beyond

The Asian students and activists reserve almost all of their criticism for administrators and the school district, which they say consistently failed to protect students.

A school district spokesman did not return a call for comment. Administrators have insisted that they responded to Asian students’ complaints and tried their best to combat violence that has become part of the culture for some Philadelphia youths.

“These problems are long-standing and go beyond the school and into the community,” district superintendent Arlene Ackerman said a week after the attacks.

A report by a retired judge, which was commissioned by the district, said there were confrontations between a small group of black and Asian students on Dec. 2 that led to the widespread Dec. 3 attacks on random Asians. The report was criticized by Asians who say it failed to account for years of documented violence and that investigators did not interview many student victims and witnesses.

Yet Duong Ly is still enthusiastic about his school. He says the English as a Second Language program is good, the teachers care, there are plenty of computers with Internet access — and it’s all free.

“If I study hard I will get a lot of opportunities, scholarships, grants…,” he says. “It’s rewarding to work hard and study hard here, more than in Vietnam. I can go to a better school, go to college, get a career, then I can take care of my parents. So I like it more here.”

He also likes his new home, a narrow, two-story row house bought from his uncle. They are the only Asians on the block.

The front door opens into the living room, where the family’s bicycles (they have no car) share space with an old, fat television, couches and a folding table for meals. On the far wall is a handsome curio cabinet of polished wood, ornately carved, holding photographs of ancestors.

Tu Ly works as a cook in an Asian supermarket. His wife is unemployed. The family has permanent resident status and expects to become naturalized citizens within a few years. Recently, Medicaid paid for a hip replacement for Duong’s mother.

“We owe this country a lot,” Tu Ly says. “The government paid a lot of money for my wife’s operation. We will work our best to contribute to society. My children can choose whatever job they like, as long as they do something to contribute to this country.”

New initiatives

The boycott was not an easy step to take. Some students were afraid of being expelled. Many parents were against it, fearing their children would become even more conspicuous targets. Some said local activists were making the situation worse.

Once it started, though, attitudes changed. “After the boycott, I felt much more confident and powerful because our voices were heard by the people,” Duong Ly says.

The district installed 126 security cameras. A “50-50 club” took Asian and black students on group outings. More bilingual staffers and diversity training were added. Principal LaGreta Brown was forced out on the eve of a faculty no-confidence vote after a local newspaper discovered her certification had lapsed.

All eyes are on the incoming principal. Otis Hackney III is 37, a black Philadelphia native, fresh from two years as principal of a mostly white suburban high school. He got the call from Philly one night when he was standing on the sidelines of his school stadium, watching a lacrosse game under the lights.

“My first thought was, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Hackney says during an interview in his new office, the cinderblock walls bare except for a picture of the singing legend Marian Anderson, class of 1921.

Soon, though, Hackney accepted the challenge. His immediate agenda includes building a relationship with the Asian community and creating a group of school stakeholders who meet regularly to set goals.

Hackney says all students should feel comfortable approaching him: “I want to listen more than I speak. Students are often much more honest than adults.” He bought a new conference table and spiffed up a room for community meetings: “The message is, this is an important place where we talk about important things.” He’s getting Asians out of their special floor and into the rest of the building. He’s looking at United Nations-style translation headphones for immigrant parents.

He is the fifth principal in six years, and he wants to stick around.

There is much to heal. The Vietnamese embassy has complained to the U.S. State Department. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a complaint with the Justice Department, which on August 27 found merit in the claims and advised the district to settle the matter. An investigation by the state Human Rights Commission is pending. The dynamic that exploded on Dec. 3 has not disappeared.

“If you’re that angry and frustrated about something that your behavior manifests itself that way, what are we not addressing as a school, as a community?” asks Hackney. “As African-Americans, we can’t forget our own struggle to the point that we become what we fought so hard against.”

“That’s one side. The other side is, when you have an immigrant population that comes in, what are the skill sets they need to function in this society? It can be very difficult for that child and that family to function in schools. So how do you put all that together? That’s my job.

“Part of it is getting people to see the human side in every person, identifying with their struggle. Once people begin to do that, you realize folks aren’t as privileged as you think they are. They don’t speak the language. They don’t have that many advantages over you. You’re just not taking advantage of the ones you have.”

Hope ahead?

Duong Ly had a busy summer: An internship at the University of Pennsylvania on Asian health issues; a psychology class at a community college; trips to conferences in Houston and Boston to discuss his new activism; being photographed for a Philadelphia magazine story that labeled the boycotters “heroes.” In between, he spent a little time working on his college essays and a lot of time on Facebook.

On Wednesday, he will walk through the battered metal doors of South Philadelphia High to start his senior year at what he hopes is a changed school.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” he says.

Can Philadelphia school end black vs. Asian violence?

Can Philadelphia school end black vs. Asian violence?

AS a Harvard professor who teaches introductory economics, I have the delightful assignment of greeting about 700 first-year students every fall. And this year, I am sending the first of my own children off to college. Which raises these questions: What should they be learning? And what kind of foundation is needed to understand and be prepared for the modern economy?

Economic View: A Course Load for the Game of Life

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – Teachers who were fired and ultimately rehired in a dispute that focused national debate over education reform have returned to their Rhode Island classrooms amid hopes that changes they agreed to will help improve student performance at their persistently troubled high school.

The changes at Central Falls High School — where just 7 percent of 11th graders tested last year were proficient in math — include a longer school day, more rigorous teacher evaluations and flexible schedules to provide more classes for struggling students. Teachers were also required to participate in more days of professional development.

Education Commissioner Deborah Gist acknowledged the obstacles facing students in Rhode Island’s smallest and poorest city.

“They’re movable,” Gist said. “We can push past them, we can climb over them, we can climb under them.”

Before school started on Wednesday, juniors attended a math “boot camp” to help them prepare for October’s tests and school leaders visited the homes of incoming freshmen. The administration is also reaching out to recent dropouts and others who have been out of school, said Superintendent Fran Gallo.

“We want children back, and we’ll find paths for them, multiple pathways, whatever it might take to work for our students, we’re committed to,” Gallo said. “I think that kind of public commitment has never been clearly defined, clearly hasn’t been put out there in a transparent way.”

Several students this week said the mass firings were unnecessary and that teachers were unfairly scapegoated for problems beyond their control. Central Falls, a cramped city just a square mile in size, has budget problems so severe that this summer it was placed under the supervision of a state-appointed receiver.

More children live in poverty in Central Falls than anywhere else in Rhode Island. Just under half of the city’s residents identify as Hispanic, and many say they do not speak English at home.

“Some kids want to come here and actually go to school and work and everything,” said junior Angela Collazo, 16. “But some kids don’t.” She added that students would have benefited more from extra tutoring than having new teachers.

The firings last February came after the state identified the high school as one of Rhode Island’s worst and ordered improvements. When reforms talks between Gallo and the teachers’ union broke down, the entire staff was issued termination notices — one of four reform options outlined in federal guidelines.

Under that model, no more than half the teachers could be rehired.

Teachers and students protested the firings, though the plan was applauded by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. President Barack Obama, in a March education speech, singled out Central Falls as an example of accountability for poor performance.

“If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn’t show any sign of improvement, then there’s got to be a sense of accountability,” Obama said. “And that’s what happened in Rhode Island last week.”

The teachers got their jobs back in May after agreeing to similar terms they had previously resisted.

There’s plenty of work to be done, both to raise performance and soothe lingering bruised feelings.

Though the union and administration struck a unified tone in announcing the new agreement, many teachers remain apprehensive and need to rebuild trust lost during the acrimonious dispute, said Jane Sessums, president of the local teachers’ union. Fewer than 10 decided not to return.

“Partly it’s the way they were treated and everything that happened last year,” Sessums said of the overall mood of the teachers. “Their job security, that trust factor, that’s really important in any teacher-administrator relationship. I don’t know if they felt as if there was a lot of collaborating going forward up to this point.”

Susan Vollucci, a visual arts teacher, said she is hopeful the changes would lead to progress, but said time will tell.

“If we could keep the kids for four years, from 9th grade to 12th grade, they would all pass the test. We don’t,” Vollucci said. “They come here, then they go to the Dominican Republic, they go to Woonsocket, they go to Providence, and they bounce around, so we can never gather the skills on a consistent year-to-year basis.”

Richard Kinslow, an English teacher at Central Falls for 21 years, said the entire episode was unsettling. He said he felt insulted and embarrassed by the negative attention, lampooned in the media and fodder for critical blogs.

But he proudly shows off a recent postcard from a student who graduated a decade ago as a reminder of the good work he believes he does.

“It was hurtful,” Kinslow said, “but it’s time to move on.”

Fired, rehired teachers back at troubled RI school (AP)

Fired, rehired teachers back at troubled RI school (AP)

SAN JUAN, Texas – When Ruth Garcia’s twins are born in two months, they’ll have all the rights of U.S. citizens. They and their six brothers and sisters will be able to vote, apply for federal student loans and even run for president.

Garcia is an illegal immigrant who crossed into the country about 14 years ago, and the citizenship granted to her children and millions others like them is at the center of a divisive national debate.

Republicans are pushing for congressional hearings to consider changing the nation’s 14th Amendment to deny such children the automatic citizenship the Constitution guarantees. They say women like Garcia are taking advantage of a constitutional amendment meant to guarantee the rights of freed slaves, and paint a picture of pregnant women rushing across the border to give birth.

A closer examination of the issue shows that the trend is not as dramatic as some immigration opponents have claimed.

Most illegal immigrants are born to parents like Garcia who have made the United States their home for years.

Out of 340,000 babies born to illegal immigrants in the United States in 2008, 85 percent of the parents had been in the country for more than a year, and more than half for at least five years, according to recent study from the Pew Hispanic Center.

And immigration experts say it’s extraordinarily rare for immigrants to come to the U.S. just so they can have babies and get citizenship. In most cases, they come to the U.S. for economic reasons and better hospitals, and end up staying and raising families.

Garcia crossed into the U.S. illegally about 14 years ago, before her children were born, and her husband has since been deported. She earns a living by selling tamales to other immigrants who live in fear of being deported from the slapdash, impoverished colonias that dot the Texas-Mexico border.

“I think that children aren’t at fault for having been born here,” Garcia said. “My children always have lived here. They’ve never gone to another country.”

Under current immigration law, Garcia and others like her don’t get U.S. citizenship even though their children are Americans.

With an estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, the issue strikes a chord with many voters — people like retired Air Force nurse and pediatric nurse practitioner Susan Struck, 66, of Double Adobe, Ariz.

“People come over … and they have babies with U.S. birth certificates, then they go back over the border with that Social Security number, with that birth certificate,” and have access to public services, she said at a recent event near the border organized by conservative tea party activists.

Several prominent Republican leaders share Struck’s beliefs on the issue. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina has been a vocal advocate for changing the Constitution, and he helped the issue gain momentum heading into the midterm elections.

“Women have traveled from across the world for the purpose of adding a U.S. passport holder to their family, as far away as China, Turkey and as close as Mexico,” said Jon Feere, legal analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict immigration laws.

Still, changing the Constitution is highly unlikely, legal scholars say. Measures have been introduced in each two-year congressional session since 2005, but none has made it out of committee. Constitutional changes require approval by two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress, an impossibility now because Democrats have the majority in both houses and most oppose such a measure. Even if that changes after November and legislation is passed, an amendment would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

To be sure, some pregnant Mexican women do come to the United States. In border cities like Nogales, women have been coming to the U.S. for decades to give birth, although the primary reason is better medical care, Santa Cruz County sheriff Tony Estrada said. Billboards advertising birthing services in Arizona line streets across the border in Nogales, Mexico.

Tucson Medical Center, 115 miles southeast of Phoenix, offers packages designed to provide inclusive care to new mothers. The program draws some residents of the northern Mexican state of Sonora who can afford its upfront costs and already have U.S. visas, spokesman Michael Letson said.

Princeton University demographer Douglas Massey said in 30 years studying Mexican immigration, he’s never interviewed a migrant who said they came to the United States just to get citizenship for their children.

“Mexicans do not come to have babies in the United States,” said Massey, who blames the tightening of the border in the 1990s for cutting off normal migration of men who used to come to work for a year or two and then go home. “They end up having babies in the United States because men can no longer circulate freely back and forth from homes in Mexico to jobs in the United States and husbands and wives quite understandably want to be together.”

More common, he and other experts says, are a families stuck with one child who is legal and others who aren’t — like Beatriz Gomez, a 35-year-old illegal immigrant who came to Phoenix 11 years ago on a now-expired tourist visa from Arriaga in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Her 12-year-old daughter was born in Mexico and is here illegally, but her two youngest children, ages 8 and 5, were born in the U.S. and are citizens.

“It’s sad,” Gomez said of her oldest daughter, who was only 1 when the family came to the United States. “She studies hard, and she won’t be able to go to a university like the other two.”

___

Associated Press Writers Amanda Lee Myers in Phoenix, Jonathan J. Cooper in Hereford, Ariz., and Paul J. Weber in San Juan contributed to this report.

‘Birth tourism’ a tiny portion of immigrant babies (AP)

‘Birth tourism’ a tiny portion of immigrant babies (AP)

The University of California has appointed an official to manage spending and operations at President Mark G. Yudof’s new private residence, after Mr. Yudof ran up nearly $700,000 in expenses and involved senior university officials in time-consuming personal matters over a rented mansion in the Oakland Hills.

A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times. To join the conversation about this article, go to baycitizen.org.

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The Bay Citizen: University to Manage Home Costs of President

Five minutes before midnight on June 30, movers hauled the last boxes from a spectacular rented home in the Oakland Hills. The tenant’s lease was about to expire, and in his haste to get out, he left behind thousands of dollars of damage to the hardwood floors and Venetian plastered walls.

A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times. To join the conversation about this article, go to baycitizen.org.

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Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen

Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California, lived in this home at 16 Woodmont Way in the Oakland Hills, shown Wednesday.

The Bay Citizen: University Head’s Housing Raises Ire

ATLANTA — Early on in Beverly L. Hall’s 11-year tenure as superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, she figured that the academic gains she intended to make with the city’s mostly poor, black students would face skepticism.

Cheating Scandal Haunts Atlanta School Superintendent

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will deliver an education reform speech Thursday morning at the National Urban League’s 100th Anniversary Convention in the nation’s capital.

Obama will discuss how his “Race to the Top” program and other initiatives are driving education reform across the country and focusing the nation on the goal of preparing students for college and careers.

Civil rights leaders are openly criticizing the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant competition, claiming it leaves out many minority students.

Later in the morning, the president will meet with his national security team to discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the afternoon, Obama will deliver remarks and sign the Tribal Law and Order Act in the East Room.

Obama to deliver education reform speech Thursday (AP)

Obama to deliver education reform speech Thursday (AP)

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will deliver an education reform speech Thursday morning at the National Urban League’s 100th Anniversary Convention in the nation’s capital.

Obama will discuss how his “Race to the Top” program and other initiatives are driving education reform across the country and focusing the nation on the goal of preparing students for college and careers.

Civil rights leaders are openly criticizing the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant competition, claiming it leaves out many minority students.

Later in the morning, the president will meet with his national security team to discuss Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the afternoon, Obama will deliver remarks and sign the Tribal Law and Order Act in the East Room.

Obama to deliver education reform speech Thursday (AP)

Obama to deliver education reform speech Thursday (AP)

A special committee of the ABA last week released the latest version of proposed guidelines on academic freedom — just days before an ABA committee met Saturday to discuss (but not alter) the draft language. In the weeks before the draft was released, many faculty leaders had urged the ABA panel not to do the two key things its draft does:

• Remove language from the ABA standards that has been interpreted by faculty members as requiring law schools to have a tenure system. (The ABA panel that wrote the revisions now says that tenure was never a requirement and that it is removing references to tenure for reasons of clarity — although that interpretation of current policy is being met with skepticism.)

• Remove specific language requiring law schools with clinical professors and legal writing professors to offer them specific forms of job security short of tenure.

The ABA panel recommending the changes has stressed that the accreditation requirements still insist that law schools protect academic freedom, and that many law schools would not necessarily change their tenure or other job protection procedures. The report accompanying the most recent draft characterizes the protections for clinical faculty members that would be eliminated as “intrusive mandates” that “are not the proper providence of an accreditation agency and provide approved law schools with latitude and flexibility to articulate and implement policies to attract a qualified faculty and protect faculty academic freedom.”

Many law professors think otherwise. They are angry not only over the recommendations, but the fact that the new draft came out immediately after so many groups had issued lengthy statements in favor of preserving existing protections. “They are trying to ramrod through an ill-advised proposal,” said Michael A. Olivas, a professor of law at the University of Houston. The proposal is “the worst of all worlds, disguised as administrative tinkering.”

Olivas is president-elect of the Association of American Law Schools, although he said he was speaking for himself, not the association. Many of the association’s leaders, however, share his concerns. In recent weeks — just before the ABA committee came out with its new draft — a series of impassioned letters were sent to the panel. Robert A. Gorman, an emeritus law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to the committee that tenure was particularly needed for law schools.

“The research, scholarship and teaching of the law professoriate commonly deal with matters of public moment and controversy, more so than is the case in most other parts of the university; and the style of teaching is typically more challenging, argumentative and indeed on occasion confrontational,” Gorman wrote. “Reliance on tenure as a buttress for academic freedom is thus particularly justified for law faculty.”

After Gorman’s letter circulated, another was sent endorsing it — by 11 other former AALS presidents, among them two former deans of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley and a former law dean at New York University (John Sexton, currently the university’s president). The American Association of University Professors came out against changing the tenure protections. And the Clinical Legal Education Association has come out against the changes and the timing of the latest proposal. (Links to many of the letters opposing the changes can be found on the ABA site.)

With all these legal luminaries opposed to change, why is it going forward?

The push started several years ago, and was led by David Van Zandt, the dean of Northwestern University’s law school. Van Zandt said at the time that characterizing the changes as an assault on tenure was unfair. He said that it was wrong for the ABA as an accrediting group to require a tenure policy — and that institutions should decide such matters. “Sometimes some people portray this as an attack on tenure,” he said in 2007. “The real issue is whether or not you’re required to have tenure by an outside body such as the ABA. Not that we don’t want to have that institution.”

After a period of some momentum, the move to change the standards stalled — but now is proceeding with the new draft.

The current policies say that for a law school to be accredited it must have “an established and announced policy with respect to academic freedom and tenure….” That language would be replaced — under the new draft — with this: “A law school shall have an established and announced policy with respect to the protection of academic freedom of its faculty members and shall provide procedures to ensure that its policy is followed….”

While the initial push to change the standards came from those saying that tenure was an inappropriate requirement, the new draft says that tenure was never really a requirement at all, so removing the reference to it doesn’t change things in a material way. “[T]he current standards do not require approved law schools to have systems for tenuring of any or all of their faculty members and this draft retains this feature,” the report says, adding that some have seen a tenure requirement as “implied” by the current language, but that this isn’t really the case. “Interests of greater clarity and transparency require that the revised standards explicitly state whether or not schools must provide tenure rights and for whom on the law faculty. So, this draft retains, explicitly, the current policy that tenure rights are not required as a matter of accreditation policy,” the report states.

It notes that there are numerous references to the importance of academic freedom and its key role in legal education.

While publicly the ABA leaders pushing for change say that they are not against tenure or law professors, supporters of tenure have noted a steady stream of criticism of law professors that emerges whenever the issue heats up. The National Jurist, a publication for law students, recently ran an article called ” When Law Profs Slack, the Students Suffer.” And that prompted coverage in a The Wall Street Journal blog: ” Are Law Professors Just Plain Lazy?”

Olivas said that he believes that a small group within the ABA leadership “just doesn’t believe in tenure” and wants to change the system. This is more than a little ironic, Olivas said, noting that ABA’s leaders include judges and law firm partners — two categories of people who themselves enjoy a kind of tenure, the latter “tenure with real money.”

He said that the declarations of support for academic freedom are empty. “Academic freedom doesn’t anchor tenure. Tenure anchors academic freedom,” he said. So the panel is recommending that academic freedom be preserved while “undercutting” the very system that has protected it.

Rights of clinical faculty

Another key issue in the changes concerns the rights of faculty who may not be on the tenure track — in law schools, clinical and legal writing faculty members are most commonly in this category. Clinical law professors run programs in which students are supervised as they take on legal cases — frequently on controversial issues — and law schools are regularly attacked over the choice of such cases.

Some lawmakers in Louisiana and Maryland pushed legislation this year to crack down on these legal clinics. In Maryland, a clinic at the University of Maryland offended the poultry industry by representing environmental groups. In Louisiana, the target was a law clinic at Tulane University that has done environmental work that angered business interests there.

The language that the ABA panel wants to remove from the requirements says that law schools “shall afford to full time clinical faculty members a form of security of position reasonably similar to tenure, and non-compensatory perquisites reasonably similar to those provided other full time faculty members.”

Gorman, the Penn professor, said in his letter that removing protections for clinical law professors was a move in the wrong direction.

“Nor should it be necessary to explain that of all faculty categories, it has been the clinicians whose teaching — most especially, in the form of live-client litigation clinics — has placed them in the position that is most vulnerable to criticism and pressure (often of the most coarse and intolerable nature) from persons, corporations and legislators who are discomforted by the work of the clinic,” he wrote. “It is precisely the clinical faculty member for whom academic freedom is a vital concern and not merely an abstract slogan, and for whom tenure provides a crucial guarantee that instruction can be carried out in the best interests of our students, and of the public.”

Olivas said he was bothered by the way the current standards let law schools place clinical and writing faculty in a separate class, with some protections but not the same as tenured faculty members. He criticized the ABA for moving to end the limited protections these non-tenure faculty members have, rather than moving them to an appropriate equal status with other professors. “There should be no bright line distinction between the two” kinds of faculty members, he said. “If clinical education and legal writing are appropriate parts of legal education, they should have the same protections, the same resources and the same faculty governance and all the academic freedom that is provided, including tenure. They need it more.”

A spokeswoman for the ABA said that it would take at least 18 months, should various association panels endorse the changes, for them to take effect.

Law school professors’ tenure in danger?

Law school professors’ tenure in danger?