Interview by E. Mendelsohn
Chapin Alumna Denise Morgan '82, Professor of Law at New York Law School and the principal editor of a new book, shares her experiences and thoughts on education, civil rights and moving forward. Her book, Awakening from the Dream: Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal Justice, was published this year by Carolina Academic Press. The following are excerpts from her interview with E. Mendelsohn.
Q: In your work, both through education and advocacy, you are interested and involved in public education policy. How does your deep belief in the power of a strong public education tie in with your own education, particularly your experience at Chapin?
A: I am very lucky to have had tremendous educational opportunities — both at Chapin and at Yale. Every child deserves the chances to succeed in life that I have had. Unfortunately, Americans like inequality in our education system. At the same time as most of us believe that children are entitled to the type of educational opportunity that will allow them to succeed or fail on their own merits, we just as firmly believe that their parents should be rewarded for their hard work and success. What feels to most parents like protecting their children by passing on the advantages of their labors has the effect of more deeply entrenching the status quo.
In that context, really good public education has revolutionary potential — to function as an engine of intergenerational mobility so that children can succeed economically, politically and socially irrespective of their parents' station in life. It is precisely because I received such a fantastic education at Chapin that I have been inspired to try to improve our public education system.
Q: What motivated you to write Awakening from the Dream?
A: Some of the most important Supreme Court decisions in recent years have been in an area of law that is virtually inaccessible to non-lawyers: federalism. While federalism — the division of power between the states and the federal government — may be an obscure and technical area of law, it affects all Americans in the most important areas of our lives. Questions of federalism are implicated, for example, in determining whether Congress has the authority to give women the right to sue their attackers under the Violence Against Women Act, what extent Congress can require states to participate in the enforcement of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, and whether Congress can give individuals the right to sue for state violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The Supreme Court under the leadership of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist severely limited Congress's ability to define federal rights and to empower individuals to sue to enforce those rights. After years of having students in my Federal Courts class express surprise and dismay that they had never heard about the Court's federalism cases before they started law school, I decided that it was time to write about those cases in a way that would be accessible to non-lawyers.
Q: Why did you decide to call the book Awakening from the Dream?
A: Awakening from the Dream is a reference to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech that he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963. In that speech King expressed the hope that "one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" In the twentieth century, this country traveled a long way towards realizing that ideal: the New Deal statutes of the 1930s and the civil rights laws of the 1960s and 1970s created a bundle of federal rights that advanced inclusion, equal membership, political participation, and economic mobility in our diverse national community.
Today, it seems as though we have given up on that dream. Many people now openly question government's role in bettering the lives of Americans. Our federal courts have abdicated their responsibility to promote equal justice, and the Supreme Court has issued decisions limiting Congress's power to enact progressive legislation - eroding existing civil rights protections, and leaving many vulnerable to exclusion from the social, political, and economic mainstream. Awakening from the Dream is about this historical moment and about the new civil rights struggle that will be necessary to lead the country out of it.
Q: What was the greatest challenge presented in the process of writing this book?
A: It was difficult coordinating the work of the 39 different contributors to the project, all of whom were incredibly busy. On more than one occasion, a contributor missed a deadline and later I would discover that he or she had been writing an amicus brief for the Supreme Court.
But, my greatest challenge was keeping the book project moving during the two and a half months that I spent on bed rest while I was pregnant with my daughter Sylvan. I learned that I can be very productive with a phone and a laptop! Most of the contributors had no idea that I was even out of my office.
Q: I understand that you conclude your book with advice to readers. Do you have any advice you would like to direct to students of Chapin on how to participate in the struggle for civil rights and healthy democracy in America?
A: I would tell them to study American history, to read the newspaper regularly, and to get involved in local issues that affect their communities. Political commitment usually starts locally. It starts when people connect events that directly affect their lives to issues that affect people in other parts of the country and to forces that have moved people for generations.