Diversity & Equity Services Office
Diversity
Month
2024
Land Acknowledgement
We collectively acknowledge that Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. We recognize, support, and advocate for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. By offering this Land Acknowledgement, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold Michigan State University more accountable to the needs of American Indian and Indigenous peoples.
Our Leadership
Every day, my work is guided by a focus on the principles of multiculturalism, equity, diversity, inclusion, and access: MEDIA. I place equal weight on each element of my mission, and these principles are central to the programming and outreach that I offer to our whole Law College Community.
Alumna Mary Ann Ferguson, Assistant Dean for Diversity and Equity Services, has provided diversity leadership at MSU College of Law since founding the DESO in 2006.
Our History
The Law College has provided legal opportunities to diverse populations since its founding in Detroit in 1891. Michigan State University College of Law students come from a wide variety of personal, professional, and educational backgrounds. This diversity creates a rich exchange of ideas in the classroom and beyond.
Our Commitment
To boldly create and sustain a Law College environment that elevates multicultural identities, empowers trauma-infomed equity, celebrates diversity, actualizes inclusion, and accelerates access for students, faculty and staff.
Our Services
- Current law student multicultural holistic advising and support
- Title IX and Civil Rights Equity Compliance
- Peer leadership development
- Inclusive diversity programming and events
- Conduit to campus and legal profession diversity initiatives
- Future Spartan lawyer admissions recruitment
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.