Events & Lectures
Annual Derrick Bell Lecture
Thursday, February 20, 2025
5:30 PM PST
110 Knight Law Center
Lecturer: Professor Kimberly West-Faulcon
James P. Bradley Chair in Constitutional Law, Loyola Law School
Livestream
“The Hidden Agenda of Legal Cases Against Affirmative Action--The SFFA v. Harvard Trojan Horse Admissions Lawsuit
1.25 CLE Credit Pending
The SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit downed Harvard’s 2014 undergraduate admissions policy but fell short of its legal goal of making race affirmative action categorically unconstitutional. In addition to explaining this doctrinal reality, Professor West-Faulcon’s talk will argue that the affirmative-action-hostile case is a modern-day Trojan horse that conceals and perpetuates a moral falsehood—that the lie deceptively concealed within SFFA v. Harvard is that inclusion-motivated attention to race is racist against White Americans. Professor West-Faulcon’s talk will include her argument that the SFFA v. Harvard case and the decades of similar admission lawsuits that predate it are deception-driven battle tactics with the morality-shifting ideological power to destroy race-inclusion-focused civil rights laws like Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The battle, according to Professor West-Faulcon, is a multi-decade war against the major legislative victories of America’s Civil Rights Movement, specifically protections against race discrimination in education and employment. Read a preview of her lecture here.
Derrick Bell
Derrick Bell served as the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law from 1981 to 1985. Dean Bell was an accomplished lawyer as well as a prolific and influential scholar who specialized in civil rights and racism in the law. Oregon Law hosted the first Derrick Bell Lecture in 2013 to showcase scholars working in the areas of civil rights and race in the law, in legal education, and in the legal profession. In 2017, the Derrick Bell Lecture became part of the UO African American Workshop and Lecture Series, sponsored by the Division of Equity and Inclusion and the Office of the President. Bell is considered one of the most influential voices in the foundation of Critical Race Theory, a framework that examines society and culture as they connect to race, law, and power.
Past Bell Speakers
2017 Barbara Arwine
2018 jon a powell
2019 Cheryl Harris
2020 Guy-Uriel E. Charles
2021 Lia Epperson
2022 A’Lelia Bundles
2023 Danielle M. Conway
2024 Leonard M. Baynes
Lecture Videos
2020 Derrick Bell Lecture
2021 Derrick Bell Lecture
2022 Derrick Bell Lecture
2023 Derrick Bell Lecture
Rennard Strickland Lecture
Annual Rennard Strickland Lecture
The Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center (ENR), through its Native Environmental Sovereignty Project, established the Rennard Strickland Lecture series in 2006 to honor the former Oregon Law professor and dean, who retired that year and passed away in 2021. Strickland, an Osage citizen of the Cherokee Nation, was widely regarded as a national leader in Indian law and policy. His leadership helped shape the ENR and Indian Law programs at Oregon Law. In keeping with Strickland's assertion that, "[i]f there is to be a post-Columbian future – a future for any of us – it will be an Indian future" (Tonto's Revenge, 1997), the Rennard Strickland Lecture series is designed to recognize and underscore the importance of Indigenous environmental-legal leadership in the twenty-first century.
Bankruptcy and Race: A Conversation with Professor A. Mechele Dickerson
The Business Law Program welcomed Professor A. Mechele Dickerson, the Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy Law and Practice at the University of Texas at Austin, for a discussion about racial inequities in the bankruptcy system, including how Black debtors who need bankruptcy relief are disproportionately placed in Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which is more expensive and burdensome than Chapter 7.
Mechele Dickerson, a nationally recognized scholar on consumer debt, teaches at the University of Texas School of Law and also has a courtesy appointment with the Liberal Arts Honors program at the University of Texas. She is the author of HOMEOWNERSHIP AND AMERICA'S FINANCIAL UNDERCLASS: FLAWED PREMISES, BROKEN PROMISES, NEW PRESCRIPTIONS (Cambridge 2014). Her research focuses on racial income and wealth disparities and she is currently completing a book project on the Neglected Middle Class.