Eduardo Capulong ’91- Dean’s Welcome
Eduardo R.C. Capulong ‘91 is Interim Dean and Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law.
Prior to joining the faculty as Lawyering Program Director in 2019, Eduardo was professor of law and associate dean for clinical and experiential education at the University of Montana, where he directed the mediation clinic and taught race, racism and American law, law and social justice, lawyering, and alternative dispute resolution.
He was scholar-in-residence at the Universidad de Granada Facultad de Derecho, where he helped launch the school’s first clinical course; visiting professor at China Youth University for Political Studies, where he taught comparative mediation; lawyering professor at New York University; and public interest, public policy, and externship programs director and lecturer at Stanford Law School and Stanford Program in Urban Studies, where he taught public interest lawyering and community organizing.
He has published and lectured widely on legal education, dispute resolution, race and racism, and progressive lawyering.
Before joining the academy, Eduardo worked in private practice and as a litigator, policy analyst, and community and union organizer for various nonprofits, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, Community Service Society, Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and the Public Interest Law Center (Manila).
A former Karpatkin Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union and Pro Se Law Clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Eduardo received his BA from New York University and JD from CUNY Law as a Patricia Roberts Harris Scholar and Davis-Putter Fellow.
Eduardo is the former co-chair of the American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Clinical Legal Education and has served on the boards of the Montana ACLU, Society of American Law Teachers, National Lawyers Guild (San Francisco), International Endowment for Democracy, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. A first-generation immigrant and political asylee, he is active in immigrant rights causes.
Remarks
Good morning. Candidates for graduation, family, friends, faculty, staff, alumni, and distinguished guests of the Law School, I am Eduardo Capulong and I welcome you to the 36th Commencement of the City University of New York School of Law.
We gather to celebrate the accomplishments of the 189 graduates of the Class of 2021. The pandemic continues to compromise our ability to honor their achievements fully and I hope we can celebrate together in person when circumstances allow. Nonetheless, we mark this milestone today to salute the triumphs, strength, commitment, and passion of this extraordinary class. I’d like to thank the student graduation committee and my staff colleagues—colleagues in student affairs especially—for organizing this event; we would not be here without them.
I joined the faculty here two years ago because I wanted to return to a community of students, teachers, scholars, practitioners, and activists equal to the task of our historical moment. Ours is an era of crises and struggle. CUNY Law’s two-fold mission—of providing access to those historically marginalized and targeted by the law and legal system and to training lawyers to bring about social and economic justice—is key to the daunting challenges before us: the one always has been the agent for the other.
I began my own journey at CUNY Law as a student eager to fuse and realize this mission. Here, I learned—and continue to learn—law and lawyering in the service of human needs: the law’s possibilities and limitations; the skills, principles, and practices required of social justice lawyering; its joys and its pitfalls. Through the years, I’ve watched this community grow into one of the most respected institutions in the academy, recognized not only because we are one of the most diverse law schools in the nation but also because we graduate the most lawyers serving the public good. We have a ways to go as an institution, to be sure. But we have come a long way indeed realizing our mission.
The Class of 2021 stands in this illustrious tradition. Over the past three or four years, you’ve developed habits of mind, practice, and heart that form the cornerstone for the next 50. You’ve represented and won significant gains for our clinic clients. You’ve landed key positions and prestigious scholarships and fellowships. You’ve published significant contributions to the legal canon. You’ve advocated for your communities and for one another. And more. Each and every one of you embodies CUNY Law’s sacrosanct purpose and the highest ideals of our profession. I’ve no doubt you will make this world more just, more humane, more equal, more united, and I could not be prouder.
I also could not be more proud of our faculty. This year especially, faced with extraordinary challenges, my faculty colleagues redoubled their efforts, committing extra hours to serving our students and strengthening our institution; writing groundbreaking scholarship; and supplying omnipresent voices of insight, wisdom, and inspiration on the issues of our day. I am stirred by their perseverance and resolve.
Finally, I am humbled by our staff. Serving as interim dean has given me the unique opportunity to appreciate their steady, skillful, compassionate work, and I could not be more grateful for the pillar they provide us all day in and day out. Let me thank my staff colleagues again for their invaluable service.
We live in ominous times. It takes no more than a cursory glance at daily headlines to remind us that the world has taken a turn. Things cannot go on as they have been. But with deepening crises come opportunity. Ours is not just an ominous but also an auspicious moment. Across the globe, more and more people are awakening, taking stock, raising their voices, and taking action. This precis frames our role as social justice lawyers—our role in bringing about the fundamental transformation of society through the creative, emancipatory use of law in partnership with communities in personal and collective struggle. CUNY Law always has been about that transformation. Indeed, we founded this law school to change legal education and the legal profession—and with them the rest of the world around us.
Class of 2021, as you leave the Law School today, you will join the generations of alumni who’ve committed their lives to this work. You will join the bar and hold us accountable to the promise of our profession. And you will continue to work with our diverse communities to bring about genuine justice. And while you undoubtedly will face great demands, I know the Law School faculty and staff, your families and friends, join me in marveling that, in the words of the novelist Dostoyevsky, “The darker the night, the brighter the stars.”