Faculty Address 2021: Academic Dean & Professor Fareed Nassor Hayat
Dean Hayat was elected by the Class of 2021 to the distinction of Outstanding Faculty Member. These are his words.
Fareed Nassor Hayat is the Interim Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and an Associate Professor at City University New York (CUNY) School of Law.
He teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy. Prior to joining the law faculty at CUNY, Hayat was the co-director of the Criminal Justice Clinic at Howard University School of Law.
As a former public defender, Hayat litigated thousands of criminal matters, demanded and won over 90% of criminal trials on behalf of his clients and believes that true criminal justice reform only comes through carceral abolition.
He served as defense counsel in the largest Maryland gang prosecution and challenged the legitimacy of gang prosecutions.
Hayat has written extensively about constitutional violations, the racist underpinnings, and the fundamentally unfair nature of gang prosecutions.
Professor Hayat currently co-chairs the New York area Law School Anti-Racist Consortium (LSARC) and is a member of the New York area Gang’s Coalition.
He has been published in Cincinnati Law Review, New Mexico Law Review and has forthcoming articles in UCLA Law Review Discourse (2021) and Rutgers Law Review (2021).
Hayat is a graduate of UCLA and Howard University School of Law. Hayat is a husband, father of two, and life-long community advocate.
Remarks
It is a great honor to speak to you all today. The last time I was asked to give a graduation speech, the organizers changed their minds because the speech was too controversial, not congratulatory enough, and a bit too negative.
I admit, it wasn’t a traditional graduation speech, but it was indeed intended to be a call to action and to inspire change, much like my words here today.
Over the years, and especially after appearing before many judges dismissive of my perspective or my clients’ version of the story, I have learned to use the law to speak truth to power in a way that can be heard and is, more often than not, compelling.
Graduates, you enter the practice of law at a very trying time. We, as a nation, are on the verge of fundamental change, and you are charged with this campaign of struggle and eventual triumph.
TRIUMPH.
In the midst of an international pandemic that sickens and kills our community disproportionately; so-called Muslim bans that target and demonize our community, in particular; defunct border walls and morally corrupt encampments that dehumanize our community directly; the killing of Black and Brown members of our community without hesitation or justification; and our specific struggles here at CUNY School of Law, where our former dean, notwithstanding her extensive history of social justice advocacy, resigned after labeling herself a slave master who reparations must flow through… You are here and you have overcome.
You have confronted naysayers, imposter syndrome, and racist language, structure, and justifications.
You have taken the exams, passed the classes, written the papers, and carved out your place.
Many or most of you came to CUNY Law for the specific purpose of taking on imperial America and creating something new.
You entered law school as organizers, teachers, social workers, advocates, paralegals, abolitionists, and the formerly incarcerated. You are still those people, but now you know the law.
You enter the legal profession, leaving this institution in a better place than you found it.
Because of you, we are now the #1 public interest law school in the country. Because of you, we are the #1 clinical law program in the country. And, because of you, we are still one of the most diverse law schools in the country.
You leave this premier public institution connected to a network of lawyers to be cherished, accessed, and hired.
I shared a story a few weeks ago about an incident that propelled me into law school. I told the audience about being wrongly accused of assault on an officer, then pepper-sprayed, and arrested right in front of my home, for attempting to demand dignity and maintain some semblance of humanity.
I talked about not knowing any lawyers to call as a first-generation college graduate, to protect me, to defend me, to ensure that I would be okay. I stated that I went to law school because of that reality.
The same need that propelled me and drove many of you to come to law school and endure an attempt to readjust your thinking and force your understanding of the world through a funnel of legal rules, customs, and practices that were designed to oppress, enslave, and exploit you (even if it’s just your thinking) are now engrained in you.
You now think like lawyers. You see the law everywhere you look. You understand this legal system. You are nearly one of them. You now have purchased suits, cut your hair, removed your piercings, code switched, and can effectively cover your tattoos. You wear the mask. But, that wasn’t your goal.
That is not why you wanted to be a lawyer.
Like many of you, my biggest challenge, and what I suspect will be one of your biggest challenges, to being a lawyer won’t be external manifestations, but making a choice to continue to engage in the legal apparatus, the practice of law, learning how to work within this legal system, yet overturn, undo, and reimagine a system that is not fundamentally sexist, classist, homophobic, and racist, while not losing who you are or who you were when you got here.
I ask you, how do you learn their laws and work within this legal system and not become one of them?
The skeptic, the insider, the proof that things really aren’t that bad, because, look at you, you did it.
I suggest — by relying on your classmates — relying on like-minded friends and colleagues, by continuing to build a community of those who believe that what we created in this country is not enough… the have nots, the detested, the immigrants, the gang members, the Muslims, the Blacks, the LatinX, the Asians, the Trans, the poor, the disabled, the addicts, and the unacceptable.
What they have and what the system provides are not enough.
Like me, you came to law school to defend yourself and your community, to provide counsel to those who could not afford an attorney to defend their dignity or identify an attorney who truly knows justice.
Based on your time here at CUNY and the relationships you have forged, you now have a lawyer to call. Your community is equipped with adequate legal counsel. As I said before, you are ready.
After law school, but before I joined the faculty here at CUNY, I was again assaulted by police.
As a lawyer, again standing in front of my home attempting to demand dignity and maintain some semblance of humanity, but this time with my wife at my side (a fine lawyer in her own right), I explained to police officers, like I did almost twenty years before, that I knew the rights bestowed upon my Black body with the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution and through the incorporation doctrine of the due process clause, the 4th Amendment applied to me, and I would not submit. Again, even after identifying myself as a criminal defense lawyer and me and my wife as two professors of the law, the police assaulted me.
My Black Life did not Matter.
But this time, although the trauma was all too familiar, I was not alone. I was not without counsel. I was immediately surrounded by my classmates from law school, like-minded change agents like you, who not only came to my aid emotionally but are equipped to represent me in a civil rights claim against police.
This time, like you… though the struggle continues, the system is still racist, and our humanity still means very little in their eyes… I am, as you are, equipped to fight back.
Instead of turning to attorneys who did not believe, I turned to my classmates, who, like each and every one of you, look like or come from similar places as me, or have had many of the same experiences as me, or at least believe many of the same things as me about what justices truly is.
So, our struggle may continue, but, with this graduating class and the years of alumni before and those who will come after you… like me, you are not alone.
I challenge the graduating Class of 2021 to never allow fear to control your choices, to be willing to lay it all out on the line, but equally seek support from your community, your classmates, CUNY alumni, faculty, and staff and know that it won’t get easier, but it can get done.
Congratulations Class of 2021. You are the future, and I am truly blessed to have been granted the honor to share in your growth. We are proud of you.
Like that last graduation speech, notwithstanding the organizers’ attempt to stop me from speaking, and, over their objection, I figured out a way to give the speech anyway.
You should do the same:
continue your advocacy, even when threatened with contempt;
fight for your clients, even when their positions may be too controversial;
organize efforts that come with little to no congratulations at all;
be negative when they think it is more positive to simply submit; and
fulfill your purpose, and become your ancestors’ greatest dreams.
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