Supreme Court Nominee Helped Set Up Lecture Series That Brought Leading Feminists to Southern Methodist U.

By PETER SCHMIDT

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For someone both heralded and feared as a potentially conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Harriet E. Miers has played a key role in exposing college students to some unmistakably liberal ideas.

In the late 1990s, as a member of the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school, Ms. Miers pushed for the creation of an endowed lecture series in women's studies named for Louise B. Raggio, one of the first women to rise to prominence in the Texas legal community. A strong advocate for women, Ms. Raggio helped persuade state lawmakers to revise Texas laws to give women new rights over property and in the event of divorce.

Ms. Miers, whom President Bush announced on Monday as his choice to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, not only advocated for the lecture series, but also gave money and solicited donations to help get it off the ground.

A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, delivered the series's first lecture, in 1998. In the following two years, the speakers were Patricia S. Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman widely associated with women's causes, and Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). Ann W. Richards, the Democrat whom George W. Bush unseated as governor of Texas in 1994, delivered the lecture in 2003.

Other speakers in the series have included Geraldine Laybourne, founder of Oxygen Media, a cable-television network for women; Gwen Ifill, moderator of public television's Washington Week and a correspondent for The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer; and Colleen Barrett and Herb Kelleher, both top executives at Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, who teamed up to give the lecture in 2004.

A description of the lecture series on Southern Methodist's Web site says it "brings role models of vision and achievement to SMU to speak on gender and women's issues."

The series "expands students' opportunities to hear and interact with nationally renowned speakers in the area of women's studies," the site says, "as well as strengthens intellectual ties between the university and the greater community."

Ms. Miers's work in setting up the lecture series is part of a pattern of deep involvement with Southern Methodist, where she received a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1967 and a law degree in 1970. She served on the law school's advisory board from 1989 through 2001, on the university alumni association's board from 1985 through 1988, and on a university board that promotes athletics in 1993 and 1994.

In addition, she worked for the law school in the early 1980s as an adjunct instructor who critiqued students' skills in arguing cases. The teaching job paid just a few hundred dollars a semester, essentially amounting to volunteer work for a lawyer who was successful in private practice.

"I would characterize her as a very loyal alum," said C. Paul Rogers, a law professor who was the school's dean during most of the period when Ms. Miers served on its advisory board. In an interview on Tuesday, he recalled her as an active board member but not an outspoken one.

He did not recall her having played any role as university officials debated whether, or how, the institution should comply with a 1996 decision, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, that struck down the use of race-conscious admissions by the law school at the University of Texas at Austin (The Chronicle, March 29, 1996). In the end, Southern Methodist complied with the Fifth Circuit's ruling, which was effectively nullified by the Supreme Court's 2003 decisions in two affirmative-action cases involving the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (The Chronicle, July 4, 2003).

Despite her involvement with Southern Methodist, Ms. Miers has little experience in dealing with education law. She has spent most of her legal career working for a large Texas-based firm that focuses on corporate law and never asked her to represent either an educational institution or anyone suing one.

She joined the current Bush administration in 2001 and has served in several capacities, most recently as counsel to the president. While she has promoted Mr. Bush's views on some issues of interest to colleges, such as stem-cell research, Ms. Miers is not known as a key player in setting White House education policy.

By contrast, John G. Roberts Jr., who was overwhelmingly confirmed as chief justice of the United States last week, dealt with a host of legal questions related to education as a district-court judge, a federal lawyer in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and a litigator for Hogan & Hartson, a Washington firm with an extensive education practice (The Chronicle, July 29).

• New Chief Justice Faced Questions About His Education Views (10/7/2005)

• Justice Rehnquist Helped Keep Courts Out of Colleges' Affairs (9/16/2005)

• Bush Nominee for High Court Knows Colleges (7/29/2005)

• Justice O'Connor's Retirement May Change Court's Approach to Higher Education (7/15/2005)

• Affirmative Action Survives, and So Does the Debate (7/4/2003)

• Appeals Court Bars Racial Preference in College Admissions (3/29/1996)