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Professor's race article stings Stetson
By LEONORA LaPETER
But the longtime professor, a white man who has a photograph of Malcolm X and a 100-year-old etching of Abraham Lincoln on the walls of his office, recently took it upon himself to attack Stetson's record on recruiting minority students. His article, Affirmative Inaction: Stories from a Small Southern School, published in Temple University's law review, argued that Stetson has failed to achieve all but "token success" in the integration of its campus and needed to do much more. Now Brown, 43, thinks he is being punished for his outspokenness. The tenured professor says the law school's dean, Gary Vause, penalized him for the article by failing to award him a summer stipend two years in a row and criticizing him for using the law school's name on court documents in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. "I'm confident tenure will protect me in the long run," said Brown, a constitutional law professor known for his passionate teaching. "But one of the reasons I went into education is because I want to be able to speak my mind. I want to be able to speak what is truth. That's what education is all about. This is what I see. This is the truth." Brown's article, which he e-mailed to the entire student body during finals week, has dropped like a bombshell on the 800-student campus in Gulfport even as students crammed for their final exams. It prompted a letter from the dean to the campus, as well as a number of letters, e-mails and phone calls from students. Many students praised him for opening a debate that has not received much attention at the private school. "It's a breakthrough, because someone finally said it formally," said Yvette Lopez, 28, who is Hispanic and graduated from Stetson on Dec. 14. "With us, we know what it's like. We can talk about it among ourselves. We're careful what we say or do, though, because we don't want to rock the boat. But someone said it other than us, and they said it in an avenue where it's respected because it came from a white, middle-aged Southern professor." But those who criticized him did so with gusto. "When it mattered for your future, I sincerely doubt you were trying to give away YOUR law school seat to some black kid without the credentials to get into law school on merit," wrote Barry Brown, a second-year law student and military captain in an e-mail to Brown. "Yet you want ME and every other white guy left with life goals unfulfilled to give ours up for some kid who hasn't got enough self-determination, will power, and work ethic to make it on his/her merit." Vause, dean of the law school, sent out a memo to the entire student body, faculty and staff last week criticizing Brown for failing to acknowledge the school had made great strides in diversifying the campus. He noted that Mark Brown's article appeared to be the work of someone trying "to discredit, not improve, his institution." One of Brown's biggest criticisms of Stetson is that's its black enrollment has remained stagnant at about 5 to 7 percent for almost a decade, while other law schools across the state -- both public and private -- have succeeded in drawing 7 to 14 percent in black enrollment. "Stetson's black enrollment remains last among law schools to this day," Brown wrote. Brown, who's taking next semester off to teach at the University of Illinois in Champaign, acknowledged it's been tough to go to work recently. But it's been hard for some time. Brown first applied for a summer grant to write the article in 2000, hoping that it would be published in the Stetson Law Review. But he said the law school turned down his summer grant request for the first time in a dozen years. So he pitched it to university law reviews around the country and it was accepted by Temple University's law review. He offered Stetson officials the opportunity to respond to it and correct any inaccuracies, but Vause declined. "Any professor has the academic freedom to publish their thoughts on any subject," Vause said. "I didn't want to do anything that might interfere with him publishing in a law review." Brown complained in a grievance that Vause had violated his academic freedom by withholding the summer stipend that year as well as the next year, when Brown wrote another less controversial article about holding government responsible for its acts. Then in June, about six weeks after Brown provided Vause with a copy of his article on affirmative action, Brown said he got a letter from Vause asking him to stop his "unauthorized and inappropriate use of Stetson University's name" in his activities as a pro bono lawyer. Brown was representing the American Civil Liberties Union before the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with a case filed by an Alabama prison inmate who claimed the prison hitching post, in which prisoners are made to stand handcuffed with their arms over a post, was cruel punishment. On documents he submitted to the court, he'd written his name and beneath it, Stetson University College of Law. Brown maintains that no school in the country has a policy prohibiting the use of the school's name and that most schools view it as an honor to see their names on important court cases. George Rahdert, a lawyer Brown hired to help him in his grievance, said he'd checked all 165 law schools around the country and found none that stopped professors from using the name of the institution on court pleadings in pro bono cases. Brown's grievance was recently considered by a three-member committee of his peers. The results of the hearing were not available, because Stetson's grievance process is confidential. "That's a private personnel matter and under the grievance procedures, I'm not allowed to discuss that," said John Cooper, a law professor and committee member. While Vause wouldn't talk about Brown's grievance, he did dispute Brown's assessment in the article that Stetson had failed to take steps to recruit minorities. Vause pointed out that the school has added two black faculty members to the staff, appointed an African-American to serve as chairman of the college's board and has launched a $12-million campaign to raise money for scholarships, including minority scholarships. Brown and another Stetson professor, Bruce Jacob, said the school once had a scholarship program specifically for minorities when Jacob was dean. Then the state began a scholarship program for minorities in the early '90s, and Stetson did away with its minority scholarship program, said Jacob. This year, the state did away with its minority scholarship program, too. Neither Vause nor his spokesman, Frank Klim, could say how many scholarships black students are getting at Stetson. Klim said the school had offered 33 scholarships totalling $384,721 (out of a total scholarship pool of $1.5-million) to minorities this past school year. But he could not break down how many black students had received scholarships. Stetson's minority enrollment was 14.6 percent last year, including about 7 percent who are Hispanic, Mexican-American or Puerto Rican. About 5 percent of students were black, down from 6.7 percent in 1999. Brown said he thinks it's the school's responsibility to work toward black enrollment that is commensurate with Florida's black population, which he says is about 15 percent in the 2000 census. As for his motivation, Brown says someone has to fight to repair the damage of slavery and other wrongs committed against African-Americans. Stetson, the state's first law school, created in 1900, admitted its first black student in 1971: Thomas E. Stringer, now a Florida appellate judge. "This is somewhat of a confession," said Brown, who has worked at Stetson for 16 years. "I'm embarrassed for my generation. I'm embarrassed for my ancestors, and we need to fix it. I'm not sure what the answer is. Some people have argued for reparations. I'm a firm believer in corrective justice."
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