My CUNY Law students had a fight in class last week. đĄ
We were talking about a case thatâs before the Supreme Court challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act (more about that another time) and one of the students brought up a case thatâs been in the news of a US soldier who abducted an Afghani baby girl. Another student said, âThereâs an argument to be made that a girl will have a better upbringing in the US than in Afghanistan.â This brought on an impassioned discussion â about how wrong the events were, but they used their classmate as a focal point, cursed at him and called him racist, misogynist and paternalistic. One stormed out of the classroom.
I wasnât going to have that in our class. I told them, âYouâre going to be up against lawyers and judges who drive you crazy, and youâre going to have to figure out how to get along with people you disagree with.â
I spent the weekend figuring out how to address this again in our last class of the semester. I told them about Haywood Burns, a great civil rights attorney and a freedom fighter who was the Law Schoolâs Dean for many years, and showed them the clip that I share with you below. Haywood was killed in a terrible car accident in South Africa shortly before I graduated. We were all devastated. At a school assembly shortly afterward, one student and staff member after another got up to talk about how Haywood knew everyoneâs name and remembered their birthdays and knew when their kids were sick. In short, Haywood was one of the kindest people around.
These were my parting words to the students: âYou can be loving and treat everybody with dignity. The best thing that you can do be an effective advocate is to pass that damn bar exam, become a really good writer, listen to your clients, learn to tell your clientsâ stories and know the case better than anyone else does. Youâll make a huge difference and your clients will be lucky to have you.â
Then I came home to the news that we lost an absolute giant in Harry Belafonte, who was, of course, the very model of commitment and elegance and brilliance and grace. The world needs us to be more like Harry, more like Haywood.
Stand up for what you believe in AND be elegant and kind. Theyâre not mutually exclusive!
