The ripples of Brown v. Board
Martha Minow, a legal scholar and the dean of Harvard Law School (HLS), offered some advice to authors: “Write out of anger. It keeps you going.” She felt ire and dismay over commentary during the 50th anniversary discussions of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the unanimous 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared de jure segregation of public schools unconstitutional. Disproportionately, said Minow, that commentary called the decision a failure. So she set out to write a book that acknowledged its limitations but celebrated its achievements. The result was “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark” (Oxford University Press). The book, published this year, was the cornerstone of an afternoon-long discussion on Saturday (Dec. 4) by two panels sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard. (The center has set out to accelerate dialogue between law and the humanities, in an “emerging discourse and collegiality,” said Director Homi Bhabha, Harvard’s...