A group of UW Law School students condemned statements made by law professor Leonard Kaplan in a release issued Sunday, asking him to retract his remarks about Hmong- Americans.
Third-year law student KaShia Moua circulated an e-mail last week, calling together students and administrators to discuss statements made by Kaplan during his Feb. 15 Legal Process class where he discussed the relationship between culture and law.
At the meeting Feb. 21, Law School Dean Ken Davis issued a public apology for Kaplan's remarks.
Moua's e-mail, obtained by the Capital Times, quoted Kaplan as saying, ""Hmong men have no talent other than to kill"" and ""All second-generation Hmong end up in gangs and other criminal activity,"" among other remarks.
""Though we do not assert that racism motivated Professor Kaplan's statements, his remarks were irresponsible considering the tense relations between Hmong-Americans and the greater community in Wisconsin,"" Kanha Vuong, a UW-Madison law student in Kaplan's class, said in the release.
Vuong said racial tensions have been high in the state due to clashes between white and Hmong-American hunters in rural Northern Wisconsin that ended in fatal shootings.
Nam Dao, a Vietnamese-American and UW-Madison law student in Kaplan's class, said Kaplan brought up examples from other cultural groups besides Hmong-Americans and used the examples to support his broader point.
""He was using it to illustrate a point that there are going to be difficulties when there are different cultural values involved,"" Dao said, regarding issues like uses of cultural defense arguments in cases.
The students want Kaplan to publicly rescind his remarks, and have also called for the Law School to affirm its commitment to a diverse and educated student body, faculty and administration. They want the Law School to implement a Critical Race Theory & Law Program and fund a Hmong Cultural Series this April, according to the release.
The group will hold a public forum Thursday at the Law School at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the incident.
