During Hispanic Heritage Month, Vanderbilt Law School has celebrated the extraordinary, diverse and influential contributions of our Latinx students, staff, and faculty–past and present.
While this month provides a point of focus for VLS and the country to recognize the critically important contributions of Latinx communities, we must also ensure that we remain continually committed to engaging with the legal issues affecting them.This month has provided a timely reminder of the rich and varied achievements of our VLS Latinx community members, their ideas and the trails they have blazed for themselves and for others. We are truly proud of this excellence, diversity and enriching legacy.
While this month provides a point of focus for VLS and the country to recognize the critically important contributions of Latinx communities, we must also ensure that we remain continually committed to engaging with the legal issues affecting them. The pandemic has revealed the enormous burden that Latinx community members have borne on the frontline of those that keep the country running. It has highlighted historically deep and systematic economic inequities, political disenfranchisement, and exclusion from key resources like healthcare and education.
As a law school, we seek to understand the significance of this month by studying how the law can build stronger pathways to uplift Latinx communities and to commit to action where the law and its potential fall short. In so doing, we hope to honor the legacies of our VLS Latinx community members and to be a place where the Latinx experience can be fully celebrated around the year.
