Remembering Terry Smith
We write to express our sadness at the passing of Professor Terry Smith, most recently of St. Thomas University (Florida) Law School, and admiration for all he contributed to our community and accomplished in his academic fields.
We want to highlight the role he played in forming the John Mercer Langston Black Male Law Faculty Writing Workshop. Terry co-founded the Langston Workshop alongside Professor Frank Rudy Cooper of UNLV Boyd School of Law, Professor Areto Imoukhuede of Nova Southeastern University Broad College of Law, and former law professor D. Aaron Lacy. The Langston workshop would not have existed without him and gained much of its strength from his leadership. Terry was known for his rigorous mind, candor, and for living by his principles.
Terry’s intellectual rigor was on display in the significant and original contributions his scholarship made in the areas of labor and employment law and voting rights, particularly as these areas impact minorities. He was a perceptive and clear explicator of structural dimensions of ongoing racial inequality.
At the Langston Workshop, Terry helped set a tone of holding workshop participants to a high standard of legal scholarship. In so doing, though, he remained a kind mentor, as he challenged people to do better as opposed to brow beating them for not being as smart and well read as he was.
He was generous with his time and intellectual energy, and cared deeply about our collective (not just Individual) scholarly presence as black men in the academy.
In promoting rigor, Terry was blunt about what this required. His quips about the necessity of reserving time for scholarship are legendary. And he did not mince words about the racism afoot in the law academy and the country in general. His latest critique of American racism is the book Whitelash: Unmasking White Grievance at the Ballot Box (Cambridge University Press 2020), which can be ordered here: https://www.cambridge.
Most importantly, Terry lived by his principles. He loved black men. He went out of his way to encourage new and aspiring law professors. As a frequent Chair or Board Member of Langston Workshops, he connected numerous new and aspiring law professors with experienced, senior mentors who served as lead commentators. He personally maintained numerous mentoring relationships and regularly checked up on his mentees’ progress, offering useful suggestions on work-life balance issues, scholarship, and managing service responsibilities. He provided many a junior scholar with detailed review of and comments on their writing.
Terry also spoke truth to power. He lived his principles by taking stands within his institutions, even at grave risk to his personal interests. He was a leader in saving the institution of tenure, and his work in that area continues to benefit the academy writ large.
Most of all, perhaps, we will miss Terry’s playful and cynical sense of humor, which often caught you off-guard, and always made you think. Terry was perceptive, acerbic, witty, generous, demanding, and appreciative of the finer things.
He will be missed, but his accomplishments will live on. We will propose that the Langston Workshop honor his memory in some permanent fashion, but that will not be necessary for as long as any of us who knew him live on; he is unforgettable.
With sadness and gratitude,
Frank Rudy Cooper, Mario Barnes, Devon Carbado, Jonathan Glater, Darren Hutchinson, Areto Imoukhuede, Cedric Merlin Powell, Michael Banerjee, Khaled Beydoun, Bennett Capers, Mitch Crusto, Raff Donelson, Atiba Ellis, Sheldon Evans, Maynard Goldburn, Paul Gowder, Justin Hansford, Vinay Harpalani, Hosea H. Harvey, Brandon Hasbrouck, Fareed Nasoor Hayat, Darin Johnson, Kevin Noble Maillard, Eric Miller, Osagie Obasogie, Jeffrey Omari, Gregory Parks, Asad Rahim, Omari Scott Simmons, Sherod Thaxton, Etienne Toussaint, Richard Winchester, Kevin Woodson, Del Wright, Adnan Zulfiqar, and many more.