EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Federal government needs to investigate civil rights complaint against public institution
Neither public scrutiny nor a civil rights complaint have swayed Penn State Dickinson Law leaders from their goal of pushing “antiracist” beliefs on students.
Only real consequences will prompt change at an institution where Marxist beliefs are so deeply embedded. But the federal government has not yet said whether it will investigate the public institution.
This spring, reports by the Washington Free Beacon and a civil rights complaint from the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust drew public attention to the law school’s “antiracist” focus, including a required first-year class on the subject.
That class, “Race & Equal Protection of Law,” is still a requirement at both campuses for the coming year, according to the Dickinson Law fall 2026 course list.
Taught by Professor Shaakirrah Sanders, the class prompted at least one student to drop out last fall due to what he described as compelled speech, the Free Beacon reported in May.
“As a former member of law enforcement in the Great State of Texas, I abhor everything this class teaches and will no longer be even a passive participant in such a farce,” David Blackman wrote to the school on Feb. 27.
“I am ‘free to think, and speak as I wish, not as the government or law school demands,'” he wrote in the email, shared with the Beacon:
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.”
The first goal listed in the course description for the fall 2026 semester suggests the class is based on a Marxist oppressor-victim framework: “Primary objectives: 1. To better understand the relationship of our legal system to the lived experience of those who are subject to it.”
The law school’s Antiracist Development Institute also has been active this summer. The institute’s goal is to “to dismantle structures that support systemic racial inequality and intersectional injustice.”
It recently hosted a “mini convening” in Montgomery, Alabama with guest speakers from the Southern Poverty Law Center. (The center currently is fighting charges for allegedly “secretly funding the leaders of extremist groups while insisting its mission was to abolish them,” according to Deseret News.)
The June event also included a roundtable discussion about the American Bar Association repealing its diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements for law school accreditation.
Not satisfied with just the law school, one of the overarching goals of the institute is to expand its teachings to the entire university “ecosystem.” Two years ago, it began working with “nearly five dozen members of the Penn State community … to develop projects that disrupt systemic racial inequality and intersectional injustice” throughout the Big Ten school.
Penn State University is slated to receive $242 million tax dollars from this year’s state budget, SpotlightPA reports.
Notably, however, the institution enjoys a special carve-out in the state public records law, which makes investigations into such programs difficult. It takes whistleblowers like Blackman to expose the indoctrination that taxpayers are paying for.
Lawyers are among the most influential leaders of our society, and public law schools should be held to high standards. While private institutions may choose to teach specific ideologies, public ones have an obligation to teach objectively and freely.
As Protect the Public’s Trust Director Michael Chamberlain put it: “Lady Justice wears a blindfold to symbolize the commitment to impartiality and equal justice under the law. A law school, of all institutions, should understand and honor that aspiration. But to see such violations laid out in a strategic plan for a law school is disturbing, and Mr. Blackman’s account of how Dickinson Law executes that plan is outrageous.
“We urge the DOJ, the Department of Education and HHS to investigate Penn State,” the watchdog leader said.
That was in May. Two months later, it’s clear that the school’s leaders are still determined to keep indoctrinating the next generation of lawyers.
With these beliefs so deeply embedded in the current leadership, it’s going to take outside action to make a difference. The federal government can investigate, and it should.
MORE: Penn State law school forces students to confront ‘systemic racism’: complaint
