NAACP's Shaw slated to deliver Cantor lecture

Updated 10:00 AM September 24, 2007

NAACP's Shaw slated to deliver Cantor lecture

By Laurel Thomas Gnagey

From teaching law at U-M and representing students in the University's admissions lawsuits to seeking justice for Katrina victims and weighing in on a controversial capital punishment case, this year's Nancy Cantor Distinguished Lecturer has dedicated his career to civil rights issues and the pursuit of racial and social justice.

Photo courtesy NAACP/LDF

Theodore Shaw, outgoing director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, will deliver the fifth annual lecture named in honor of former Provost Nancy Cantor, now chancellor of Syracuse University, for her "unflagging commitment to diversity."

Shaw, a member of the Law School faculty from 1990-93, will address "The Betrayal of Brown: The Struggle Over the Place of Race in America" during his public lecture at 9 a.m. Oct. 4 in the Mendelssohn Theater.

"Ted Shaw is one of the nation's leading voices on the legal issues surrounding diversity in higher education," says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs and convener of the Nancy Cantor Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Diversity. "His knowledge of the University of Michigan's efforts to maintain diversity as an important part of its mission makes him the ideal person to present this year's Cantor lecture."

Although Shaw has served for three years in his current role, from which he will resign Feb. 1, 2008, his tenure at the LDF has encompassed more than 22 years. During that time, he has been at the forefront of the national debate on affirmative action.

He served as lead counsel for black and Latino student interveners who joined the U-M undergraduate admissions lawsuit, Gratz v. Bollinger — one of two cases heard in 2003 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled that while the University's undergraduate admissions process at the time was flawed in the way it sought to assemble a diverse class, consideration of race to achieve diversity was legal.

Although he was pleased with the court's decision, Shaw's immediate reaction was that the affirmative action battle was not over.

"Michigan was a very important victory, but it's not enough," he said during a U-M School of Education event in May 2004.

"Shaw predicted that even after the Supreme Court's decision, affirmative action would continue to come under attack," Hazel Trice Edney reported in the Birmingham Times. " 'There's another storm brewing,' " he said. Shaw, as quoted by Trice Edney, vowed: " 'We're going to fight on every front.' "

That article further cited Shaw as saying the storm is in the form of more ballot initiatives in other states, orchestrated by Ward Connerly, who was behind the passage of Proposal 2 in Michigan. Connerly reportedly plans to place anti-affirmative action issues on the November 2008 electoral ballots in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Affirmative action also encountered a roadblock in June when the Supreme Court ruled against voluntary school integration plans in the Seattle and Louisville schools — a decision LDF called a "step backward" from the Brown v. Board of Education case that in 1954 declared segregation illegal and paved the way for the Civil Rights Movement. Shaw called the June 28 Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education decision by a divided court (5-4) "a betrayal of Brown."

During a March 24 event in Harlem on "The Future of Diversity," sponsored by Columbia University, that campus publication, The Record, reported Shaw as saying that those who think affirmative action should be based on class, not race, are not seeing the whole picture.

" '(But) since the majority of poor people are white,' Shaw said, 'such a shift would leave black and Latino students underrepresented,'" Fred Bernstein of Columbia's Record wrote. "He also had these words for those who say it is time for a color-blind society: 'I refuse to let go of the issue of race, because the issue of race has not let go of us.' "

In addition to affirmative action, Shaw and the LDF have been at the forefront of issues involving victims of Hurricane Katrina — including filing lawsuits regarding distribution of federal funding, threats to purge voter records for displaced residents and delays getting wait-listed children enrolled in school.

He also called in 2006 for an investigation into the case of Ruben Cantu, a young man who was executed in 1993 in Texas for a murder. More than a decade after Cantu's execution, new evidence discovered as a result of LDF's call for an investigation proved Cantu did not commit the crime.

Shaw graduated from Wesleyan University with honors and from Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow. After graduation he worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice from 1979-82.

NAACP's Shaw slated to deliver Cantor lecture

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