Meera E. Deo (Southwestern; Google Scholar), Building Belonging:

Given the end of affirmative action as we know it, a decline in numeric representation of students of color in higher education is inevitable—resulting in devastating losses for legal education, the legal profession, and American leadership. Yet, those who seek to maintain diversity cannot focus their attention solely on cultivating novel admissions strategies. We must couple recruitment with retention.

Belonging, a student’s malleable sense of their connection to campus, is a critical tool for improving retention rates as well as academic outcomes and student wellness. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is instructive in this context as a framework that centers the lived experiences of the students of color at the heart of the affirmative action debate. Law schools must encourage all members of their community to engage in behaviors to increase students’ sense of belonging on campus, particularly activities that will support law students of color most at risk of attrition post-SFFA. Using a CRT lens and drawing on literature from multiple academic disciplines, this Article uses national, longitudinal, quantitative data to propose belonging interventions in legal education. After reviewing both settled questions and unresolved opportunities in our evolving affirmative action jurisprudence, and building on the CRT-infused SFFA dissents, this Article proposes empirically informed strategies for faculty, students, and administrators to enhance retention through increases in student belonging.

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