EUGENE–Rennard Strickland, dean of the University of Oregon School of Law and Knight Professor of Law, has received the Haywood Burns Award from the Northeast People of Color Conference.

The award was created to honor individuals whose continued scholarship and service to legal education and the interest of diversity has made a lifetime contribution.

The award is given in memory of Haywood Burns, founding dean at the law school of the City University of New York and a major force in the advancement of legal rights for all citizens, including minorities.

Strickland is a leading authority on Native American law and the first person in legal education to have served as both president of the Association of American Law Schools and chair of the Law School Admission Council. He became dean of the UO School of Law in 1997.

"I am deeply honored to receive an award honoring the work and the memory of my friend Haywood Burns. This is especially meaningful because it is presented on the basis of more than 30 years of work on the issues of diversity and opportunity. It is even more important that we focus on those issues at a time when the diversity of the legal profession is under attack," says Strickland.

The Northeast People of Color Conference is an association of law school faculty of color which seeks to promote improvement in the quality of legal education, to foster opportunities in legal education for non-traditional students–including minorities, and to promote the scholarship of faculty of color and issues important to faculty of color.

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