Through the Gale: Trailer


Olatunde Johnson [00:00:02] I'm Olatunde Johnson, a professor at Columbia Law School and one of the hosts of Through the Gale. This podcast is a collaboration between faculty, staff and students. We talk to many people. It's about all of us as lawyers. The world seemed to shift in 2020. There was the shock of lockdown and all the sickness and loss, the killing of George Floyd, the uprisings that followed. People have said it was a reckoning after 2020. Columbia Law School, the faculty, the staff, the students. We all have many questions about how law schools would change. 


Kendall Thomas [00:00:36] Law and legal education are inherently biased toward the maintenance of the status quo. If we want to take the notion of inclusion seriously, we need to expand the conversation about academic freedom. 


Sneha Pandya [00:00:50] We're living through some of the most challenging times any of us will see in our lives. And I think the larger question is just what are we going to do with the training that we have? Who are we going to be? 


Olatunde Johnson [00:01:02] We also wanted to know how legal practice would change and whether all the pledges to be anti-racist were sincere and whether they would last. 


Susan Sturm [00:01:09] We are in a set of legal institutions that were simultaneously set up to promote freedom and democracy at the very time that they were also set up to enslave people. The role of lawyers and judges remains a struggle that we have to be able to deal with. How do we deal with the contradiction of racialized power? 


Olatunde Johnson [00:01:28] This is a podcast that goes well beyond anything in our law school. It really looks at legal practice and how lawyers responded to the seismic changes of 2020. 


Samuel Spital [00:01:36] The legal profession was complicit in a number of abuses of the Trump administration. 


Marica L. Wright [00:01:43] This profession as a whole is very busy. I think it's more difficult sometimes to step back and say, Wait a minute, what am I doing to make a better society? 


Samuel Spital [00:01:55] The law is supposed to be a noble profession. Being a lawyer, you do have this most fundamental obligation to democracy, to the rule of law. And nothing, no creative argument nobody believes can overcome those most basic obligations that you have. 


Olatunde Johnson [00:02:12] We do our best to tell the story. 


Ted Shaw [00:02:14] In this moment, I believe in passing the baton, but even more importantly, for younger people to take the baton, even if it's not passed to them, we have to choose hope not, because there's every reason to be hopeful, but because the alternative is unacceptable. It's impossible. 


Olatunde Johnson [00:02:36] Over the next few episodes, Columbia Law School students, faculty and guests will explore what it truly means to go through the game. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.