Affirmative Action, Hate Speech, and Tenure Narratives About Race, Law, and the Academy

Governments across the globe are struggling to deal with the socially deplorable issues of racism and ethnic hatred. No more apparent is this struggle in the US where educational institutions find themselves at the forefront of legal and social practices to combat racism. This book studies the 'race-based' legal cases and literature surrounding three seemingly different practices in US academic institutions: affirmative action in college administrations, hate speech codes (developed to prevent racist insitement in colleges), and tenure of faculty of colour. These processes implicate a spectrum of behaviour that accounts for what is commonly believed to be race, the explicit use of race in hate speech, the implicit use of race in tenure discrimination and the benign use of race to remedy the injustices of the past with affirmative action. Rather than engage in conventional legal interpretation, Baez treats these cases as 'narratives', that is, as cultural texts that tell significant stories about the social world. Highlighting potential assumptions and contradictions in these cases, Baez sheds doubt on the role of the courts and academic institutions in progressive race-projects and suggests that framing these issues within legal terms forecloses a critical response to them.Baez, Benjamin is the author of 'Affirmative Action, Hate Speech, and Tenure Narratives About Race, Law, and the Academy' with ISBN 9780415929646 and ISBN 0415929644.