Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago
Educational institutions serve as critical sites for shaping future leaders and fostering critical consciousness. Recent political developments, including systematic attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and the weaponization of anti-CRT rhetoric, have created unprecedented challenges for race-conscious pedagogy. These efforts continue reverberating across educational contexts, fueling censorship, silencing conversations about systemic inequality, and restricting institutional access. However, a Critical Race Studies lens offers potent strategies for resistance and institutional reimagination.
This panel brings together scholars and educators examining how legal education—and educational practice broadly—can foster critical consciousness while equipping future leaders to challenge oppressive systems and envision more equitable futures. Panelists will share concrete strategies for embedding CRS principles within curriculum, mentorship programs, and institutional reform initiatives, while addressing real-world barriers posed by political, legal, and institutional backlash. From community-engaged learning methodologies to radical reconceptualization of classroom dynamics, this conversation highlights teaching as both a site of resistance and a foundation for systemic transformation.
Together, participants will reflect on pedagogical approaches that cultivate responsibility, resilience, and imagination in emerging scholars and practitioners. This discussion invites students, faculty, and allies to collectively consider how educational practice can serve as both a foundation for collective liberation and a safeguard against civil rights retrenchment.
•Jonathan Feingold, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘12
•Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law
•Addie Rolnick, Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Indian Nations Gaming & Governance Program and Associate Director, Program on Race, Gender and Policing, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘04
•Anna Spain Bradley, Professor of Law and Faculty Director, The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA (with locations in Los Angeles and in Europe), UCLA School of Law
•Moderator: Fanna Gamal, Assistant Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Educational institutions serve as critical sites for shaping future leaders and fostering critical consciousness. Recent political developments, including systematic attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and the weaponization of anti-CRT rhetoric, have created unprecedented challenges for race-conscious pedagogy. These efforts continue reverberating across educational contexts, fueling censorship, silencing conversations about systemic inequality, and restricting institutional access. However, a Critical Race Studies lens offers potent strategies for resistance and institutional reimagination.
This panel brings together scholars and educators examining how legal education—and educational practice broadly—can foster critical consciousness while equipping future leaders to challenge oppressive systems and envision more equitable futures. Panelists will share concrete strategies for embedding CRS principles within curriculum, mentorship programs, and institutional reform initiatives, while addressing real-world barriers posed by political, legal, and institutional backlash. From community-engaged learning methodologies to radical reconceptualization of classroom dynamics, this conversation highlights teaching as both a site of resistance and a foundation for systemic transformation.
Together, participants will reflect on pedagogical approaches that cultivate responsibility, resilience, and imagination in emerging scholars and practitioners. This discussion invites students, faculty, and allies to collectively consider how educational practice can serve as both a foundation for collective liberation and a safeguard against civil rights retrenchment.
•Jonathan Feingold, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘12
•Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law
•Addie Rolnick, Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Indian Nations Gaming & Governance Program and Associate Director, Program on Race, Gender and Policing, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law, UCLA Law JD ‘04
•Anna Spain Bradley, Professor of Law and Faculty Director, The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA (with locations in Los Angeles and in Europe), UCLA School of Law
•Moderator: Fanna Gamal, Assistant Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
