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School says law ‘students are encouraged to explore and challenge differing perspectives’
Penn State Dickinson Law defended a mandatory first-year class about “antiracism” recently after at least two students accused the school of political indoctrination.
The law school, which is public, has faced Congressional scrutiny and is the target of a civil rights complaint. Along with requiring the course “Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws,” it also runs an Antiracist Development Institute that works “to dismantle structures that support systemic racial inequality and intersectional injustice.”
“No changes are planned to 1L [first year] curriculum established for the 2026-2027 academic year,” including the controversial class, the law school told CBS News 21 in a statement last week.
“The law school also endeavors to provide an open and respectful learning environment for all who teach and study at Penn State Dickinson Law … one in which students are encouraged to explore and challenge differing perspectives,” it stated.
However, some students who have taken the class said the opposite.
One male student, who spoke to CBS 21 on the condition of anonymity, described it as “purely political.”
“They wanted to indoctrinate a new generation of more activist lawyers,” the student said, adding that the class teaches that the U.S. was “founded on white supremacist ideals.”
The student said the class did benefit him by forcing him to “critically evaluate” his own beliefs, which were “put to the test every day.”
And while the professor did present opposing views, it was not done in an “even-handed way” and students with liberal and progressive beliefs were not challenged to consider the merits of differing views, he said.
When asked why he did not drop out, the student said law school is a “hefty financial commitment,” so he put his “head down and grind[ed] through it.”
Another student, David Blackman did quit after Dickinson denied him an exemption from the class, The Fix previously reported.
In July, Blackman testified to Congress that the course is designed “to teach the structure of the nation’s constitutional democracy through the ‘lens of enslavement and racism.’”
“For years now, every law student who’s come through Penn State Dickinson Law has had to sit and be told that law enforcement is racist, the law is racist, and it needs to be overturned,” he told The Fix previously.
“These are 1Ls who decided they wanted to go fight and uphold the law in our nation’s courts, and they’re being told that the very laws that they chose to defend are racist and should be overturned,” Blackman said.
Earlier this year, the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust also filed a civil rights complaint to several federal agencies accusing the law school of pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion and “institutional antiracism” in its curriculum, admissions, and hiring. It cited the school’s strategic plan as evidence.
The Washington Free Beacon, which broke the story, reported more about Blackman’s case in May:
Launched in 2020 at the height of the George Floyd protests, the class is now raising questions about whether a public law school violated the First Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. Blackman withdrew from the law school after a committee convened by law school dean Danielle Conway refused to grant him an exemption from the course, which he said amounted to compelled speech. In an interview with the Free Beacon, he also noted that the course vilified white people and law enforcement and that professors assigned texts by critical race theorists without presenting an alternative perspective.
“My law degree is not worth sitting through a mandatory DEI class that spits on my entire background,” said Blackman, who helped the Texas Guard deliver emergency supplies during Hurricane Beryl. “You have a lot of people who say DEI is bad, but I gave up a law career because of it.”
MORE: Pennsylvania GOP lawmaker voices concern over Penn State Law’s mandatory DEI class
