Four voices from the Fred Gray Institute joined a national panel of legal educators for the final session of Roger Williams University School of Law’s Integrating Doctrine and Diversity speaker series — a year-long conversation about how to teach civil rights, equity, and inclusion across the legal curriculum. Co-sponsored by the City University of New York School of Law, Berkeley Law, JURIST, and the Anti-Racist Development Institute, the session was devoted to the life and work of Attorney Fred D. Gray and how more than seventy years of advocacy might be embedded in legal education today. The panel was opened by Dean Gregory Bowman and moderated by Assistant Dean Nicole Dyszlewski of Roger Williams Law.
The conversation brought together three Fred Gray Institute Fellows alongside the Institute’s Executive Director. Jonathan Entin, the David L. Brennan Professor Emeritus of Law at Case Western Reserve University, and Ayesha Bell Hardaway, Professor of Law and Director of the Social Justice Institute at Case Western, drew on Attorney Gray’s landmark cases — from Gayle v. Browder and the Montgomery Bus Boycott to NAACP v. Alabama, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study settlement — to explore how those victories continue to shape constitutional law, voting rights, and the classroom. Jeffrey Baker, Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, connected that legacy to clinical and experiential teaching, while Dr. David Fleer shared the founding story of the Fred Gray Institute — commissioned by Attorney Gray in 2023 — and the three pillars that guide its work: collaborate, convene, and educate. Watch the full conversation below.