Texas A&M University School of Law Professor Michael Z. Green was the keynote speaker at the symposium, "Out of the Shadows: Implicit Bias, Institutional Responses,” on April 15 at the University of Oregon School of Law.

Green gave the closing evening lecture, “Civility and Mediation as Workplace Responses to Conscious Disregard of Racially-Biased Behaviors.” The presentation, which also discussed Green’s recent paper, “Negotiating While Black,” was captured via livestreaming and is available on YouTube.

Professor Jennifer Reynolds, Associate Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Appropriate Dispute Resolution Center at Oregon Law, discussed Green’s “provocative" lecture in the post “Green on Race and ADR,” for the blog Indisputably. Reynolds said Green “pointed out that a rights-based way of thinking often ignores toxic workplace incivility.”

Reynolds also noted how Green questioned whether we should put aside right-based arguments and “strive to behave civilly toward our co-workers and others.” In this respect, Reynolds concluded that “civility acts, as [Green] points out, as a response to implicit bias and conscious disregard of bias” in the workplace.

Green said the presentation “highlighted a number of racial incidents over the last few years at college campuses and workplaces and suggested how focusing on civility and using mediation could have improved the resolution of those matters.”

Green’s presentation also discussed a preliminary paper resulting from his ongoing scholarship on workplace dispute resolution and race, a topic he is collaborating on with Texas A&M University School of Law Eminent Scholar in Residence and Visiting Professor and Faculty Fellow of the Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Study, Richard Delgado, as part of a law review symposium on prejudice and alternative dispute resolution scheduled for spring 2017.

Green, a recent recipient of the Paul Stephen Miller Memorial Award, is an elected ​Fellow of ​the College of Labor and Employment Law and an elected member of the American Law Institute.

- Article by Jennifer Nassar, Communications Specialist, Texas A&M University School of Law