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Current Work/Current Thoughts
Project Writings
Contact
Information
Bio
Professional experience:
Matthew Wilkes currently is working in the administration of New College of
California, a progressive alternative institution of higher education
founded in 1971 and based in San Francisco, CA. The work involves
examining and documenting matters of assessment, planning, governance,
communication, and other vital functions at the College, all considered in
the context of enhancing essential operations, both academic and
administrative, satisfying accreditation requirements, and advancing the
mission of the school. The College's mission is summarized in its
commitment "to integrate education with creation of a just, sacred, and
sustainable world." Along with undergraduate and graduate programs of
study, it is home to the New College of California School of Law, the
longest-lasting public interest law school in the country.
Prior to this, he worked for a dozen years at New York Law School, first as
Associate Dean for Student Affairs over a period that spanned the last
decade of the last century, and then as Associate Dean for Public Interest
and Community Service, creating a new office to concentrate on public
interest efforts across the law school. Significant accomplishments in the
first position held there included leading the design and successful
implementation of strategies to increase dramatically the racial/ethnic
diversity of enrolling classes. Another significant initiative in this
work was to establish a summer public interest fellowship program that grew
to provide several hundred thousand dollars in annual support for some 70
students working in otherwise nonpaying public interest and public service
positions.
Prior experience in legal education included approximately five years
working in the Dean's Office of the newly established law school of the
City University of New York (CUNY), which admitted its first class in 1983
and was created to offer an innovative curriculum to train a diverse group
of students for careers in public interest law. Before joining the CUNY
Law School effort to make fundamental changes to the standard law school
experience, he worked as founding administrative director of the Center for
Law and Human Values during the start-up phase of this independent national
nonprofit institute focused on developing and offering educational programs
and materials that explored alternative approaches to law teaching and
practice, beyond the prevailing adversary model, with an emphasis on
mediative approaches to dispute resolution.
Before entering this work in legal education, he worked in government
service positions at the federal, state, and city levels, in offices
ranging from work as a law student clerk in the U.S. Attorney's Office in
Washington, DC, to service as a Special Assistant Attorney General in the
Office of the Special State Prosecutor, investigating corruption in the New
York City criminal justice system, and in a public policy position in the
Office of the New York City Council President.
Education:
Having earned an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College in 1974 (where he was a
Rufus Choate Scholar and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with
High Distinction in Government and Psychology, devised as part of a
modified-major program of study), in 1977 he earned a J.D. from Columbia
University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and
served as Student Coordinator for the Community Clinical Law Project. This
program addressed legal and mental health issues in the Harlem/West Inwood
community, assisting clients through work with the Harlem Legal Aid
Society, the Columbia-Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute, and the Harlem-
West Inwood Community Mental Health Center.
Organizations:
Organizational involvement has included participation in activities of the
Society of American Law Teachers and the Conference on Critical Legal
Studies. A more recent affiliation is with a group called Sitting Lawyers,
a West Coast working group of the Law Program of the Center for
Contemplative Mind in Society, a nonprofit organization established in 1995
and based in Northampton, MA, working to integrate contemplative awareness
into contemporary life in order to help create a more just, compassionate,
and reflective society.
Writings / Publication:
"Teaching Through Tragedy: The Aftermath of September 11 -- A Community
Service Response," 205 Case Western Reserve University Law School Journal
of International Law (Volume 34, No. 2, Fall 2002).
Current Work/Current Thoughts
Personal background and development:
I have been working over time to reconcile the desire to participate in
efforts to advance social justice and recognition of our interconnectedness
with the coexisting desire to cultivate (and work from) consciousness of a
sense of centeredness, peace, and well being. Part of this has involved
concern with achieving a unity of being, to be able to live the values I
care about, and to not have an artificial divide separating aspects of
life, such as that which can arise between one's personal and one's
workplace identity.
In fact, the workplace itself seemed to present a laboratory of sorts, in
which to engage and explore such issues, and, beginning with summer jobs,
from high school through college and law school, and in keeping with my own
working-class background, I consciously sought employment experience in a
wide variety of settings, with the thought that this might offer some
useful insight into the role that work plays in our lives, at whatever
level we might find ourselves in the workplace pecking order. This
exploration came to include my exposure to work in such positions and
settings as: lumber store sales and inventory stocking, furniture
delivery, an experimental rubber mold assembly line (to manufacture
football pads), as well as in a smelting and refining plant, a glass
factory, a bakery kitchen, oyster shucking in a pirate bar/restaurant,
warehouse truck-loading work for an overnight delivery service, cemetery
maintenance, including grave digging, work as a prison guard in a state
maximum security facility, and work on a road repair and maintenance crew.
The broadening effect of the outlook gained through these work settings
contributed to developing a greater understanding of the overall
experience, including the difficulties, injustices, and limitations,
commonly encountered in a variety of work lives in this society. In
particular, a feeling of resonant recognition developed with respect to
those engaged in pursuits, both "professional" and otherwise, that can be
seen to fit rather easily with Thoreau's assertion that the mass of men
(and, presumably, women) "lead lives of quiet desperation."
Entering law
Along with the wish to engage in what for me would be more intrinsically
meaningful pursuits, academic interests that developed alongside my varied
workplace experiences drew me to think that work in law might provide a
possible vehicle through which I could seek to participate in efforts to
address societal ills and inequities and, ideally, work to create
conditions to make a better life a more readily available option for
greater numbers of us. Early on my thought was that this might be achieved
through pursuing work in the context of governmental efforts to advance the
general good, to right wrongs and repair tears in the social justice
fabric, as expressed on the national democratic stage through the tradition
of new deal, square deal, new frontier, and great society rhetoric,
philosophy, and programs.
Searching for alternatives / influences
My experience in law school and, upon graduation, entering into government
service, in turn led to a degree of disillusionment with legal /
governmental / political operations as possible routes to achieve the aims
of justice that originally had drawn me to this work. This led me to shift
and refocus efforts, to think about how to work, in some sense, from the
outside in, leading to exploring prospects in the nonprofit and educational
sectors as offering possible points from which to advance the ideals I
cared about, and to do so in a manner more commensurate with how I wished
to act and be (i.e., in a more straightforward, direct, and honest manner,
and with less concern for political and other sorts of calculation,
maneuvering, and manipulation).
Upon entering the legal arena, an early realization for me was that, rather
than wishing to engage in roles involving adversarial combat, I was drawn
instead to the prospect of exploring alternative, more cooperative ways to
resolve differences, to recognize commonalities, to build alliances, and,
acting in harmony with like-minded others, to advance causes in which I
believed. Among other influences, this orientation led to the strong
attraction for me of the well-grounded, principled, insightful work of the
Center for Mediation in Law (CML), a national nonprofit education and
training institute associated with the Center for Law and Human Values,
with which I began work some twenty years ago.
The work of these groups has resulted in development of an "Understanding-
based Model of Mediation." The overarching goal of this approach to
mediation teaching and practice is to resolve conflict through deeper
understanding by the parties of their own and each other's perspectives,
concerns, and priorities, to enable them to find creative and mutually
acceptable, if not downright rewarding, solutions to matters that may have
been the source of conflict. I have tried to draw upon insights of this
sort and to follow and promote influences and thinking consistent with this
approach in work I have pursued, which over the past 20 years has been
largely in connection with institutions of higher education.
Over time, I also have benefited from the chance to work with individuals
pursuing an interest in contemplative practice, coupled with active
consideration of ways in which this perspective might be integrated
usefully with one's daily life and work (in the spirit, for example, of
what has been termed socially engaged buddhism). As it happens, for me
this has included the chance to work with some who are engaged both in
mediation and meditation, among whom there is recognition of common
elements across the two fields (beyond the difference of only a single
letter in spelling and the confusion that can cause) that can be mutually
reinforcing. Along with the attraction of contemplative approaches and the
attempt to identify and draw upon the "eternal verities" for guidance, my
continuing concern for broader societal matters and desire to advance
social justice issues led to a desire to link these with concerns of the
sort that, through its work, the Project for the Integration of
Spirituality, Law, and Politics explicitly seeks to address.
Along the way I feel I have had the very substantial benefit derived from
being able to connect directly and personally with others who are committed
to work of the sort I wish to pursue and the larger vision this entails.
This has been a source of deep satisfaction that goes beyond merely the
attraction of engaging with the underlying ideas in and of themselves. The
fortunate result has been to be able to enjoy the chance to join in
meaningful work with thoughtful and compassionate colleagues, to be
inspired by them, both directly and, at times, more remotely, and to enjoy
the benefit of mutual reinforcement and encouragement that comes from
engaging and connecting with others in this way, with respect to issues
that matter.
Current work
With regard to finding purpose in what we are doing and how we spend our
time, my current work is at New College of California (where I am housed in
the office of the Institute for Spirituality and Politics, sharing space,
time, conversation, occasional meals, and some work with colleagues and
fellow office mates Wendy Ervin and Peter Gabel). I feel fortunate that
this brings me to an educational institution that, over the past thirty-
plus years, at its core has pursued an idealistic communal vision as an
alternative to destructive influences and structures coursing though
mainstream culture. At the same time, to better ensure institutional
health and continuity, there appears now to be a need to move toward
greater regularity and reliability in operations and decision-making
processes, while not losing sight of underlying values and higher order
humanistic impulses.
A challenge involved in this is found in seeking to strike the proper
balance between achieving effective processes leading to sound outcomes and
the desire to preserve the alternative cultural vision that has relied upon
and reinforced informal and collegial relations. The latter approach is
accompanied by a more open atmosphere, one that fosters freedom and
creativity, and, in an overarching sense, also helps to make it all feel
more meaningful, personally rewarding, and, in the end, worthwhile. In one
sense this involves the attempt to follow "the letter of the law," in terms
of satisfying contractual, regulatory, and accreditation requirements for
the institution, while at the same time seeking to realize more
transcendent values, both personally and with respect to the institution
and the higher goals it might seek to embody (beyond merely seeking to
assure continued existence as an end in itself).
Finally, an aspect of personal challenge for me that has recurred numbers
of times is located in the tension that results when my desire to maintain
an authentic, optimistic, positive, forward-looking orientation comes up
against discouraging developments, whether in my immediate surroundings or
in the broader political realm, both globally and more locally. The hope
of being able positively to influence the local, and continuing to think
this ultimately might be a way to influence the global (somewhat in the
anarcho-syndicalist spirit), without question has encountered numbers of
stiff challenges and difficult-to-swallow doses of what passes for reality.
On the other hand, since the alternative to hope, harmony, and comradely
engagement of this kind does not offer any attraction at all, we may find
ourselves left with the (compound) question: why not hope, and act
constructively together, and, in the face of any difficulties encountered,
take solace from the fact that, in good faith, we have done that?
Contact Information
Matthew Wilkes
New College of California
777 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: 415-593-0505
Fax: 415-626-5171
Email: mwilkes@newcollege.edu
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