Black Law Students at Columbia Call for Firing of Central Park 5 Prosecutor
A new Netflix miniseries based on the wrongful convictions of five minority boys for a 1989 rape they didn't commit has prompted black law students at Columbia to demand the school fire lecturer Elizabeth Lederer, who helped prosecute the case.
June 11, 2019 at 06:10 PM
4 minute read
Columbia Law School's Black Law Students Association is calling for the school to dismiss a lecturer who was a key prosecutor in the so-called Central Park Five case—now the subject of a high-profile Netflix miniseries—and to offer more inclusive teaching.
In a letter issued Tuesday, the organization requests that the law school fire lecturer Elizabeth Lederer, who co-prosecuted the infamous case in which five young minorities were convicted of a 1989 rape they didn't commit. That call comes one week after a campuswide organization of black students at Columbia released a petition demanding that Lederer step down from her lecturer post and that its medical school revoke an award previously bestowed on fellow Central Park Five prosecutor Linda Fairstein. More than 9,000 people have since signed the petition.
“Columbia Law School should fire Elizabeth Lederer, but that is just a start. The School must do more because letting one professor go does not improve the lives of Black and Latinx law students, nor does it improve the learning experience of students of color at Columbia Law School,” reads the letter from the Black Law Students Association. “If Columbia Law School wants to show that they care about Black and Brown law students then the school needs to address the racism inherent in how the law is taught.”
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