UMRA’s final forum of 2021, on November 23, focused on the important topic of leadership in times of crisis—in particular, in the current time of racial reckoning. The speaker was Garry Jenkins, dean of the University of Minnesota Law School. 

Dean Jenkins has been a leader in the response to the George Floyd murder. He has emphasized the need for not just a legal response but also for changes in the way people relate to each other. In June 2020, he and Laura Bloomberg, then dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, wrote a compelling piece on the issues for MinnPost.

One of Jenkins’s primary interests in both scholarship and practice is the subject of leadership. His presentation for UMRA focused on five leadership lessons, particularly as applied to racial reckoning. 

First, in times of crisis, lean in, not out. Second, focus on helping your players—students, staff, faculty, administrators, alumni, even outsiders—feel that they belong in the community doing the work. “Belonging is deeper than being included,” he said.

Third, prepare for backlash when you do, in fact, lean in on controversial issues. Fourth, broadly look for help. Fifth, recognize both the urgency created by the crisis, but also combine that sense of urgency with a long-term plan. 

Hard work

In elaborating on these lessons, Jenkins noted that in facing topics such as racial reckoning, people often want easy technocratic solutions, but those do not solve the underlying problems of racial violence. So, an organization such as the Law School has to do the hard work of looking around and actually seeing barriers that are standing in the way of progress. And, instead of distancing itself from events, the organization has to move towards them in both big and small ways—to research, to listen, to understand, to collaborate, to engage, to do what the institution does well. 

To that end, to cite one example, the Law School has created its “Civic Scholars Initiative” to give students and other constituents a vehicle for collaborating with community partners. The Law School has also created a Racial Equity & Justice Committee to provide faculty and students yet another means of pursuing racial justice work. And with a lead gift from two recent alumni, the Law School has established the George Floyd Memorial Scholarship in Law to help diverse students to receive a legal education.

In the collaborative effort, Jenkins emphasized, everyone must feel they belong. Your people—including your students in an educational setting—need to feel they are seen, that they are valued for what each of them can bring to the table, that they are co-creators of solutions. And then they need to reach out beyond the organization to work with legislators, administrative agencies, state officials, other educational institutions, and the broader community to make lasting change. 

The Law School is undertaking many steps to follow these five leadership lessons and is proud as the state’s public law school to be in the vanguard of the effort to lean into a time of racial reckoning.

Jenkins arrived at the U in 2016 as the school’s 11th dean and the William S. Pattee Professor of Law. Immediately before coming to the Law School, he was associate dean for academic affairs and the holder of a named professorship at the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University. 

In addition to his academic positions, Jenkins has practiced law, at the Simpson Thacher firm in New York City, and has served as the chief operating officer, general counsel, and corporate secretary at the Goldman Sachs Foundation.

Under Jenkins leadership, the U of M Law School has increased its student diversity by 75 percent and increased its black student enrollment by 600 percent. Its overall student population has grown, and this year the school welcomed the second most credentialed class in the school’s history.

— Bradley G. Clary, emeritus clinical professor of law and UMRA member