Gonzalez, Carmen G., Women of Color in Legal Education: Challenging the Presumption of Incompetence (April 10, 2014). The Federal Lawyer (July 2014) . Available for download at SSRN:  http://ssrn.com/abstract=2470660

“Female law professors of color have become the canaries in the academic mine whose plight is an early warning of the dangers that threaten legal education and the future of the legal profession. As legal education is restructured in response to difficult economic times, tenure itself is coming under fire, and downsizing and hiring freezes are becoming more common. The diversity gains of the last few decades may unravel, and academic employment may become increasingly precarious for all but the small number of academics at the most elite law schools. This article discusses the importance of faculty diversity to the health of the legal profession, and examines the barriers that female law professors of color encounter in the academic workplace. Drawing upon the author’s co-edited book, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González & Angela P. Harris eds., 2012), the article sets forth best practices that can be adopted by academic leaders to remove these barriers, to create an inclusive and equitable campus climate, and to ensure that the upheavals in legal education do not sabotage these efforts. The article includes recommendations for the American Bar Association, the Association of American Law Schools, and US News & World Report.”