Inclusive Community

American University Washington College of Law values diversity and inclusion.  A welcoming environment, however, doesn’t just make itself.  Sexist, homophobic, and transphobic acts, often intertwined with racist, ablest, and xenophobic hate, harm members of our community.  The Women and the Law Program collaborates with others on our campus to prevent harassment and discrimination in our school and the legal profession. 

We plan our programming and courses to be open and relevant to all, addressing difficult questions of history, of exclusion, and of discrimination, head on.  We bring to this an awareness that the Washington College of Law, for all that it was a groundbreaking institution, was, at the same time, a product of the Jim Crow south.  While the school welcomed Latina and Native American women, it denied entry to African-American students until the 1940s.  Rather than run from this terrible history, the Women and the Law Program works to repair it—through our teaching, our scholarship, and our building of a resilient community not afraid to ask the hard questions, even of ourselves.