Tag Archives: Blog

Statement in Solidarity with Columbia Law Review and Rabea Eghbariah

Posted on by
Reply

We, the 2024-2025 CUNY Law Review Editorial Board, stand in solidarity with the Editorial Board of the Columbia Law Review, in their publication of novel legal scholarship by Palestinian lawyer, Rabea Eghbariah. Eghbariah’s article, Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept, offers a legal analysis of “Nakba” and directly addresses the horrific history of the Nakba and the plight of the Palestinian people. We commend the student editors at Columbia for their editing and publication of a work that centers the Palestinian experience and the violence Palestinians have suffered under Zionist colonization.The article importantly speaks to the genocide that has been unfolding before our very eyes.

Given CUNY Law Review’s explicit social justice mission, it is our moral obligation to stand in solidarity with oppressed people and speak up when efforts to bring visibility to that oppression are met with censorship. Legal scholarship has historically silenced the most vulnerable and marginalized people. Censoring writers like Eghbariah is reflective of that system of oppression. We condemn the actions of Columbia Law Review’s Board of Directors in censoring and silencing the Editorial Board and Eghbariah.We also condemn the Board of Directors’ disclaimer statement and support the strike of their student editors. Shutting down the website in response to the publication of Eghbariah’s article was not only contrary to principles of academic freedom and free speech, but also contributes to the erasure of Palestinian voices amidst the genocide of their people and destruction of their land. 

Censorship is a hallmark of oppression and cowardice, and it will not stifle the movement for Palestinian liberation. We acknowledge the courage of Columbia Law Review as we move forward and continue our mission of centering voices which propel social justice. Palestinian voices matter and have the right to be published. 
Please read the article here.

Whistling Dixie

Posted on by
Reply

Peggy Cooper Davis, Aderson Francois, and Colin Starger

Content warning: this article quotes a decision that includes the n-word1.

Dixie is a song with a complicated history. Versions of it were sung by both Confederate and Union troops during the Civil War. Historian Karen Cox carefully documented the song’s lingering popularity and its mixed social and racial signaling in Dreaming of Dixie. Over the years – and for reasons that are not entirely clear – “just whistling Dixie,” a slang expression based on the song, came to stand for bravado without follow-through. A seemingly overblown statement might cause listeners to wonder whether the speaker was speaking truth or “just whistling Dixie.” A threat might cause listeners to wonder whether the speaker was actually dangerous or “just whistling Dixie.”

Continue reading →

After Dobbs, Are Rights for Zygotes, Embryos, and Fetuses Next?

Posted on by
Reply

By Cynthia Soohoo

Justice Alito’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey marks a watershed shift in the way that the country treats people who are pregnant versus an “unborn life.” By stripping constitutional protection from the decision to have an abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization equates pregnant people’s right to control their bodies and the state’s interest in protecting prenatal life.

Continue reading →

Unmasking and Refocusing the Hidden Curriculum by Teaching with a CROWN Act Simulation

Posted on by
Reply

By Elizabeth Stillman,1 Associate Professor of Academic Support, Suffolk University Law School

Success in law school, like in any form of higher education, requires that students feel a sense of belonging. Belonging “refers to students’ perceived social support on campus, a feeling or sensation of connectedness, and the experience of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected, valued by, and important to the campus community or others on campus such as faculty, staff, and peers.” 

Continue reading →

Stop Line 3: A Call to Clear Danger to Our Water, Climate, and Land in Minnesota

Posted on by
1

By Summer Blaze Aubrey, Esq. LL.M.1 (Cherokee/Blackfeet) & Patricia Handlin, Esq.2

Enbridge, Inc. is a Canadian company that moves oil from the Western Canadian oil tar sands through a pipeline from Alberta, Canada across Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. Line 3 is new construction that will connect Alberta to Lake Superior along a different route. The pipeline’s route snakes through the wild rice fields of Minnesota, called manoomin or psίᶇ, a sacred food of the Anishinaabe, the Ojibwe and Minnesota Chippewa Tribes, and Dakota Tribes, respectively, and is at the center of their cultural identity, spiritual traditions, and physical and economic well-being. The route crosses the headwaters of the Mississippi River as well as hundreds of other rivers, bodies of water, and wetlands in Minnesota and ends on the shores of Lake Superior just across the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. 

Continue reading →