SHAAKIRRAH R. SANDERS PRESENTS AT AALS ANNUAL MEETING
January 2025 — Professor Shaakirrah R. Sanders participated on two panels held Wednesday, January 8, 2025 at the AALS Annual Meeting held in San Francisco.
Professor Sanders moderated a panel entitled Privacy and Racial Justice that was sponsored by the Section on Defamation and Privacy. this program highlighted the contributions of African Americans and other people of color to U.S. privacy jurisprudence and will explore how despite these contributions people of color continue to disproportionately suffer privacy infringements in their homes and in public. This program will emphasize how surveillance, tracking, and data mining techniques always has and continues to intensify the racialized privacy regime in the U.S. Panelist included Professor Norrinda Brown, Fordham University School of Law; Professor Abi Hassen, Penn State Dickinson Law; Professor Najarian Peters, University of Kansas School of Law; and world renown privacy scholar Professor Anita Allen, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. Professor Sanders served as outgoing Chair of the Section on Defamation and Privacy.
Professor Sanders was also a participant on a panel entitled Navigating Classroom Disruptions and Interruptions. This program was sponsored by the Section on Women in Legal Education. This pedagogy-focused panel will examine how instructors experience and respond to classroom disruptions and interruptions, and what kind of support law schools can provide to the affected instructors. First, the panel will explore how student behavior in class often varies according to the race and gender of the instructor. Second, it will consider how instructors who report and seek guidance regarding the behavior in question receive “classroom management” feedback but are not necessarily provided with support that speaks to the problem’s gender and racial dimensions. Finally, the panel will propose how to frame classroom disruptions and interruptions as administrative concerns that impact the law school community rather than just one isolated professor and class. Panelists included Dean Lolita Buckner Inness, Dean, University of Colorado School of Law; Professor Sarah Haan, Washington and Lee Law School; Professor Maybell Romero, Tulane University School of Law; and Professor Tiffany Graham, Touro University Law School, who served as moderator.
Shaakirrah R. Sanders serves as Associate Dean for Antiracism and Critical Pedagogy, as Professor of Law, and as the Lewis H. Vovakis Distinguished Faculty Scholar. Prior to joining Penn State Dickinson Law as visiting professor of law in 2022, Professor Sanders was the first African-American descendant of slaves to achieve the rank of full professor at the University of Idaho and its College of Law. She teaches Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and the First Amendment.