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Pennsylvania State University Antiracist Development Initiative for Law Schools and their Communities
Program: Directed Grants Program
Grantee: The Pennsylvania State University
Grant Amount: $500,000
Summary of Grant Outcomes
The Antiracist Development Institute (ADI) at Penn State Dickinson Law School has established itself as a leader in antiracism and antiracist legal education. ADI’s three-pillar framework consists of institutional antiracism, critical pedagogy, and systems design/design thinking. AccessLex provided grant funding for the implementation of the annual convening and the debut of an antiracist book series.
The ADI’s annual convening is a three-day, in-person immersive experience for law faculty and staff, administrators, students, and community members to practice institutional antiracism. A total of 200 participants from across the country attended the convenings at Penn State Dickinson Law School in October 2023 and October 2024. The convenings employed a cohort model of “Admissions and Financial Aid,” “Leadership and Community,” and “Teaching and Learning.”
Significant progress has been made on the University of California Press book series, titled “Building an Antiracist Law School, Legal Academy, and Legal Profession,” with 90% of the chapters completed toward the nine-volume series and five volumes under contract. More than 120 colleagues from the legal academy, legal profession, and adjacent organizations have served as chapter contributors, content reviewers, editors, and systems designers for the book series. For more information about the series development, please visit https://dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/adi-book-series.