As a community dedicated to training the next generation of lawyers and leaders, the Kline School of Law holds diversity and inclusion as critical values. Given our nation’s complicated history, and our multicultural future, we believe that the school’s leadership in diversity and inclusion is both a moral imperative and a practical one. We share our nation’s commitment to equal justice under law and seek to live that credo as a learning community. On a concrete level, we expect our graduates to deliver excellent services to a wide array of clients and to guide the legal community and society at large through the major transitions of the 21st century. A diverse and inclusive law school community is a prerequisite to these goals and aspirations.

We understand that the term diversity encompasses an array of differences among a group of people with unique life experiences. One of the most persistent challenge lawyers, and our entire society, face are the effects of racial discrimination – past and present. The need for intentional diversity efforts responds to that reality. But it also responds to our understanding that a collaborative law-learning community must include people of varied ethnicity, class, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and ideology. Lawyers serve society; this is our society. Diversity is not enough, however. We must be inclusive because that is the key to a healthy community. It is essential that every community member can access the rich opportunities of the Kline Law experience. Each person must be treated as a full and valued equal.

I am proud of the progress we make every day towards living these commitments. Our community is more diverse today than it has been in many years, and we have broadened our efforts to instill these values in spaces large and small within the life of the law school. However we succeed, or fail, on any given day, we recognize that diversity and inclusion are not simply a destination. Every day we must recommit to these values as a core of our community ethic.