Law Commons^™

Breaking Down Systemic Barriers Around African American Entrepreneurship, Marcus Cole, Bryan Ritchie, Philip Gaskin, Andrew Welters

2019–Present: G. Marcus Cole

Jul 1, 2020

The benefits of entrepreneurship are well documented. Startups are responsible for nearly all job growth in the United States, experience growth rates substantially higher than other businesses, can help eliminate poverty and have an outsized impact on overall economic productivity and GDP. Despite this, entrepreneurship and venture capital have been largely closed to minorities, with African Americans being impacted particularly hard.

African Americans make up approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population yet only 2.2 percent of small businesses are owned by them. By comparison, whites make up approximately 60 percent of the population but own 82.5 …

The Professor As Institutional Entrepreneur, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

Law professors are all about ideas, and the creation of an institute, clinic, or center within a law school is the instantiation of an idea. Ideas embodied in law school institutions become crystallized in the fabric of a school, changing its culture, internalizing its values, and reflecting its priorities. Robert Cochran has helped to establish multiple institutes, centers, and clinics at Pepperdine Caruso Law School, and in so doing he has become the law school's great serial entrepreneur. The institutes Cochran helped to establish have become laboratories to give expression to his ideas about the relationship between faith, ethics, and …