Today, unlike most Mondays during the school year, I will not be in the classroom.  The University of Tennessee is closed in celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., our nation’s iconic non-violent civil rights leader.  Today also is the day that my daughter is in transit back to her college in New York for her last semester as an undergraduate.  It seemed only fitting, honoring both occasions, to go out on Friday night with my daughter and my husband to see the movie Selma.

Despite its historical inaccuracies (which have been played out in the public media, e.g., here), the movie is a successful one.  Among other things, it spoke to me of the amazing amount that one man can accomplish in a mere 39 years with focus, action, and perseverance.  I admittedly felt a bit lazy and ineffectual by comparison.

Selma also reminded me, however, of the near daily opportunities that King had to speak out on matters of public importance.  I wondered if there was anything in his teachings that would speak directly to me today.  Specifically, I wondered if I could find something he’d said that helped to guide me as a business law professor in the current business law or legal education environment.

Of course, King spoke out against  Jim Crow laws, which provided for legal segregation of the races in both businesses and education.  But I was looking for something a bit more personal.  Then, I found this quotation:  “The function of education . . . is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. . . .  Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education.”  

That was it.  King wasn’t writing about law school in 2015 from the vantage point of an educator.  Rather, he was writing about education generally, in the 1940s, from the perspective of a college student.  The quotation apparently is from a piece he wrote for the Morehouse College newspaper, the Maroon Tiger.  A more full expression of the relevant text is set forth below.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, “brethren!” Be careful, teachers!

That passage sings to me today as a business law professor.  It speaks so simply of what I believe we are trying to do in law school at its core.  Of course. there’s a lot of unpacking we (each and all) need to do from there to arrive at and implement the right program of legal education for our students . . . .  But I am now ready for class on Wednesday (when I next am in the classroom)–ready not in the sense of having done the required reading or in the sense of having a sound plan for my class meetings that day.  But ready in terms of knowing why I am there, why I teach law students.

I also am more ready for the discussion group I am leading tomorrow.  It has become an annual tradition at The University of Tennessee College of Law to convene lunch discussion groups (the dean buys the lunches) in connection with Martin Luther King Day.  Tomorrow, we have been invited to focus our discussions on, among other things, diversity and inclusion at the College of Law.  I plan to use King’s ideas to start things off.