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82 St. John's L. Rev. 235 (2008)
Bias, the Brain, and Student Evaluations of Teaching

handle is hein.journals/stjohn82 and id is 239 raw text is: BIAS, THE BRAIN, AND STUDENT EVALUATIONS OF TEACHING DEBORAH J. MERRITTt The complaints are never-ending, voluminous, and contradictory. I talk too loud or not loud enough. I walk too close to people and make them nervous. If I look at students, they are nervous. If I do not look at them they are angry. If I call on them, I am picking on them. If I do not call on them, I have a personal vendetta against them .... When I talk to students in an attempt to ascertain what I do that is so different from the other professors teaching the same section of first-year students, they admit that I do no more in class than their white male professors-my class is no more rigorous, no more intimidating, no more work. In fact, they seem to like the class.... Most students appear to like the use of overheads, the introductory and periodic summaries, and question and answer periods .... The only difference appears to be that I am a Black female ....1 INTRODUCTION Professors of color have published poignant accounts of harshly negative student evaluations.2 As the few empirical t John Deaver Drinko/Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University. Years of conversations with colleagues have helped shape the ideas reflected in this Article. For more immediate assistance, I am indebted to Ruth Colker, Andrew Merritt, Daniel Merritt, and Elaine Shoben. Kristin Harlow provided invaluable research assistance. 1 Pamela J. Smith, Teaching the Retrenchment Generation: When Sapphire Meets Socrates at the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Authority, 6 WM. & MARY J. WOMEN & L. 53, 162-63 (1999). 2 For descriptions in the legal literature, see, for example, Okianer Christian Dark, Just My 'Magination, 10 HARV. BLACKLETrER L.J. 21, 21-28 (1993); Richard Delgado & Derrick Bell, Minority Law Professors' Lives: The Bell-Delgado Survey, 24 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 349, 349-54, 359-61 (1989), which reports results of a survey mailed to all minority law faculty; Trina Grillo, Tenure and Minority Women Law Professors: Separating the Strands, 31 U.S.F. L. REV. 747, 752-54 (1997); Joyce

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