On May 27, 2020—two days after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota—professor and former judge Michael McConnell, the author of one of the following Articles, used the n-word in a class at Stanford Law School while reading a quotation he attributed to Patrick Henry. As members of the first legal journal to publish Professor McConnell since May 27, the undersigned editors of Volume 97 of the Washington University Law Review condemn Professor McConnell’s use of the n-word in the classroom. We believe that the use of this word in the classroom is unacceptable and unnecessary, as it significantly disrupts the learning environment and places a burden on Black students that other students do not face.
In publishing this statement, we seek to balance our own condemnation of Professor McConnell’s action with the academic freedom that we, as members of a journal committed to publishing a diversity of competing ideas, unequivocally support. Nevertheless, Professor McConnell’s action comes amidst a national reckoning on systemic racism, white supremacy, and police violence in the United States, and his use of the n-word—no matter the setting—cannot be divorced from this larger context. We apologize to our readers, especially the Black members of the Washington University community, whom the Law Review has hurt by publishing Professor McConnell’s work.
We also recognize that we cannot denounce Professor McConnell’s action without taking a look inward at our own failures to support our Black peers. As a journal, the Washington University Law Review has consistently failed to support Black voices, both through the scholarship that we choose to publish and through our membership, which is overwhelmingly white.