Robert Kent Chair Investiture Ceremony and Lecture: Learning Bigotry’s Lessons
Monday, November 25th, 2019
Boston University School of Law
Barristers Hall, Ground Floor
12:45 – 2:00pm
Professor Linda C. McClain’s inaugural lecture as the Robert Kent Professor of Law will reflect on the pervasiveness of charges, denials, and countercharges of bigotry in the U.S. Bigotry is a fraught and contested term, evident from the rejoinder that calling out bigotry is political correctness. That is so even though renouncing— and denouncing—bigotry seems to be a shared political value with a long history, and preventing bigotry have engaged the efforts of civil rights activists, religious leaders, social scientists, politicians, lawyers, judges, and ordinary citizens. People disagree, however, over who is a bigot and what makes a belief, attitude, or action bigoted. The rhetoric of bigotry poses puzzles that urgently demand attention. 
Can a sincere religious belief be bigoted? Is the bigot a distinct type of personality, or is everyone a bit bigoted? Is “bigotry” simply the term society gives to repudiated beliefs that now are beyond the pale? What does it mean to brand someone as a bigot? To shed light on such questions, the lecture will reflect on lessons learned from examining past and present controversies over interfaith, interracial, and same-sex marriage and over landmark civil rights law and more recent conflicts between religious liberty and state antidiscrimination laws protecting LGBTQ persons. Such conflicts reveal that bigotry has both a backward- and forward-looking dimension. We learn bigotry’s meaning by looking to the past; examples of bigotry on which there is now consensus become the basis for making new judgments about new forms of bigotry and coming to new understandings of injustice and justice.
About the Speaker
McClain has authored or co-authored seven books, most recently Who’s the Bigot?: Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law (Oxford University Press, March 2020), on which she will base her inaugural lecture. Her other books are Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues (Harvard University Press, 2013) (with BU Law faculty member James E. Fleming); The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility (Harvard University Press, 2006); two edited volumes, Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women’s Equal Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2009; pbk ed., 2012) (with Joanna L. Grossman) (mentioned in the credits of the film, On the Basis of Sex), and What is Parenthood?: Contemporary Debates about the Family (NYU Press, 2013) (with Daniel Cere); the co-authored casebook, Contemporary Family Law (West Academic, 5th ed. 2020), and co-authored textbook, Gay Rights and the Constitution (Foundation Press, 2016). McClain has also published numerous articles and book chapters.
McClain has been a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at Princeton University Center for Human Values and a faculty fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. A past chair of the Family and Juvenile Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, she currently serves on the Executive Committee of that Section and the Section on Women in Legal Education and is a member of the American Law Institute. At the School of Law, McClain has organized interdisciplinary conferences and symposia, including an upcoming conference on the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, establishing the right of women to vote. As an affiliated faculty in the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies (WGS) Program, she coordinates the law school’s participation in the WGS Certificate Program for JD students. McClain is also faculty advisor to the Women’s Law Association. In addition to teaching at BU School of Law, McClain also teaches in the Kilachand Honors College at Boston University.
About the Robert Kent Lecture
In recognition of Professor Linda C. Mclain’s distinguished contributions to legal scholarship and to the School of Law, Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig has appointed her to the Robert Kent chaired professorship. Created to honor excellence in faculty at BU Law, the chair is named to honor Professor Robert Kent (’49), who taught civil procedure for more than 30 years.