Key Takeaways
- Penn State Dickinson Law School is facing civil rights complaints due to its Strategic Plan, criticized for promoting a 'Marxist ideology' and allegedly forcing white students to confront systemic racism.
- The plan emphasizes institutional anti-racism and aims to restructure the land-grant mission to promote equity and justice, but has been labeled as discriminatory by critics who believe it undermines true legal education.
- Mandatory coursework requiring students to address 'patriarchy' and recognize white privilege has raised concerns about racial and gender discrimination within the school's culture.
The Pennsylvania State University Dickinson Law School is facing a civil rights complaint over its new Strategic Plan, which a Pennsylvania lawmaker criticized as “Marxist ideology.”
Protect the Public’s Trust, an organization focused on an impartial government for all citizens, filed the complaint, urging the Trump administration to investigate the school for violations of Titles VI, VII, and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“In short, Penn State seeks to force the ‘oppressors’ – code for white students, regardless of any individual’s background, history, or personal experiences – to confront accusations of systemic racism and leverage them to change themselves,” the complaint states.
“The ‘oppressor/oppressed’ framework in the context of anti-racism assigns individuals to either of the categories based entirely upon their race,” it states.
The school’s five-year Strategic Plan, which began last year and will continue until 2030, highlights four main goals to strengthen the foundations of the law school and the lawyers it produces.
The second goal of the plan is titled, “Engage with Institutional Antiracism in Support of the Land-Grant Mission.”
“Law Schools have special duties and obligations to teach and learn about equality and justice for all,” the goal states. “The Land Grant mission is tied to a history of dispossession and, therefore, must be explored and restructured to create opportunities for all to benefit from equity and justice.”
The school plans to produce “scholarship…and meaningful and justice-infused service to re-envision the role of land-grant universities, generally, and Penn State University, specifically.”
Protect the Public’s Trust wrote in a recent post on X that its “complaint also cites reports of MANDATORY coursework instructing students to ‘eradicate patriarchy’ and characterizing white students as ‘privileged,’ which appears to discriminate on the basis of sex and race.”
PPT Director Michael Chamberlain criticized the plan for advancing a political agenda in an email to The College Fix.
“The Penn State University Dickinson Law School Strategic Plan appears to engrain discriminatory policies into the fabric of the school’s culture and makes it seem almost as though the mission of the law school is to train activists instead of lawyers,” Chamberlain said.
“The Plan calls for everything the law school does … to reflect discriminatory DEI orthodoxy, which elevates or favors certain people and disadvantages others entirely on the basis of race,” he said.
Similarly, Pennsylvania State Rep. Barbara Gleim called the new plan a type of “Marxist ideology” in an interview with The Fix.
The school “intentionally uses likable words like ‘anti-racism’ and ‘anti-oppression’ to mask an agenda that undermines [the] core values of a true law education.”
She added that these viewpoints “should not be the focus of an American state-funded law school.”
Gleim also called for the school to be held to the highest standards of transparency for the taxpayers who help fund it.
“I am sure the students and parents who pay for Penn State services would appreciate knowing that their dollars are now going toward a new strategic plan that undermines the western culture as we know it,” she said.
There are no current ongoing investigations, despite the calls and controversy surrounding the plan.
The Fix contacted Penn State University’s media relation team twice for comment concerning their response to these complaints as well as any plans to change its outlined strategy. The school did not respond.
Beyond the new Strategic Plan, Aaron Sibarium, a reporter for The Washington Free Beacon, exposed a “mandatory anti-racism class” at Penn State in a post on X, The College Fix previously reported.
“Penn State told 1L law students they must ‘acknowledge the reality of systemic racism’ and ‘dismantle systems that racialize, subordinate, and oppress,’” the post reads.
Sibarium also shared audio from a class lecture in which several faculty members can be heard promoting “anti-racism.”
One professor said the course is “not optional” because engaging in “anti-racism” is not just “one way to be a good lawyer.”
“Paying attention to these things is what it means … to be a good lawyer,” the professor said.
