"You go one of two ways when you're threatened. You draw back and hide, or you become even more outspoken. I did the latter. "

She may have started the race in life from two steps back -- being both black and female -- but you won't find UI law professor Adrien Wing bringing up the rear on any of the issues she decides to pursue. No, look for Wing out ahead of the crowd, blazing a trail that others are likely to follow.

And what is her role out there in the front?

Law professor Adrien Wing pushes her students to become familiar with different races and cultures.

"I see myself as a translator between cultures," Wing says. At age 38, she is the first black female law professor and the youngest female full professor at the University of Iowa. In the College of Law, Wing has developed courses to address the role of race in American law and to examine issues of law in radically different cultures. She has advised the Palestinians on the drafting of their new constitution, and she organized a conference in South Africa that brought 30 American lawyers and scholars to consult with members of the African National Congress as they began drafting an interim constitution. A harbinger of social change, Wing attempts to soften the impact of culture clash by conveying the humanity of each side to the other.

Her latest project has taken her to the streets of south-central Los Angeles, where she's been spending time with gang members. She's even brought some of those young men to Iowa.

To understand how Wing came to be working with gangsters, you have to look back to 1982, the year she graduated from Stanford's law school. Wing was engaged to Enrico Melson, a recent medical school graduate who had heard a speech calling for doctors to go to Beirut, Lebanon. When Melson heeded the call for doctors in the war-torn region, Wing decided she couldn't let him go alone. Israeli shelling of Beirut was in full swing. The Middle East was a tinderbox.

"Neither one of us knew anything about the Palestinians, but out of a humanitarian sense we decided to go," says Wing. "I went with Enrico because I loved him. It was the year the movie Reds came out and we were going off to this war zone. To us, this was Reds."

The two were assigned to a Palestinian hospital that served the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps of West Beirut.

"We had no anesthetic. We had no blood," recalls Wing. "We had no gasoline to run the generators for lights and refrigeration. We had mass chaos. My job was to try to make some order so that the doctors could do their jobs."

The couple lived in a bombed-out room on the eighth floor of the hospital. "I was so scared by the continuous bombing," says Wing, "but people around you act normal, so you soon act normal, too."

They were in Beirut for a month, tending to Palestinians and hearing the Palestinian perspective on the Middle-East situation. Only days after Wing and Melson left Beirut to start their jobs in the United States, the notorious massacres in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps took place. "We just missed being killed," Wing says. "We were dark skinned. We looked just like the people there."

Back in the States, long before it became acceptable to do so, Wing began to speak out on behalf of the Palestinians. She wanted to put a human face on the Palestinians, to show that they were not just terrorists who bombed commercial airliners and the Berlin tavern, but men, women, and children capable of the full range of human experiences. But, as a consequence, Wing and her family faced threats to their lives and were forced to leave their home for a time.

"You go one of two ways when you're threatened," says Wing. "You draw back and hide, or you become even more outspoken. I did the latter. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't."

Because of the time she spent in Beirut, Wing added the Middle East as one of her regional specialties in international law. In 1993, while reading a journal on the Middle East, she saw that a recent truce between two Los Angeles gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, was based on the 1949 Arab-Israeli peace agreement.

"I was astounded," Wing says. "How could a bunch of kids in south-central L.A. have done this?"

Hoping to meet the people involved, Wing flew to Los Angeles. She discovered that the young men who had drafted the gang truce were graduates of Amer-I-Can, a program founded by Jim Brown, actor, activist, and former football star.

"It's a curriculum that teaches the skills most of us who have gone to university already have -- like emotional control, communication, goal setting, and financial management," Wing explains.

Within months, she was bringing Brown and three former gang members to Iowa.

"I was so impressed with how these young men had transformed themselves from criminals and gangsters into productive citizens," says Wing. She wanted Iowans, exposed to the mostly negative images of blacks on television, to see the humanity of these young men; and she realized that some of Iowa's larger cities could benefit from the Amer-I-Can program. Wing hoped the young men would serve as role models for youth at risk in Iowa.

"These guys are typical in that they became involved in crime at an early age. What's not typical about them is that they've been able to overcome that background and turn their lives around."

Intrigued by the gang members' success at reforming themselves, Wing spent the summer of 1994 in south-central Los Angeles. She talked with dozens of gang members, completed training as an Amer-I-Can facilitator, and researched the gang truce for a book she's cowriting with Jim Brown.

In October 1994, Des Moines's first class of 20 Ameri-I-Can facilitators graduated and began offering the program to young people at risk in Iowa's capital. And Wing brought Tony Perry and Tarik Ross, both formerly members of the L.A. Bloods, to Iowa City. The men were featured speakers at a noon-time forum in Boyd Law Building.

Wing's in-it-up-to-your-elbows work with gangs and other issues is appreciated by many of her law students. "She doesn't just preach something; she lives it," says second-year law student Colleen Halliman. "She goes out into the community and gathers firsthand information and incorporates it in what she teaches."

She also includes students in her international work whenever possible. When she was called upon to comment on the document that would become the interim constitution of South Africa, Wing asked her students to participate. "It's very meaningful for them to be able to take part in something like this as students," Wing says. "They were faxing things back and forth to South Africa what would have a real impact on an extremely important document."

In Wing's class "Racism and American Law," minority students outnumber others and the shift creates a different dynamic. "She told us the majority will be the minority and the minority will be the majority in this class," says Halliman, herself a black woman. The demographic reversal, along with Wing's support, gives minority students a heightened level of confidence. They speak out in discussions, abandoning the reticence they may display in other law classes. Perhaps not surprisingly, white students in the class are less vocal, more reserved.

Wing uses time in the classroom to challenge students' cultural and social biases, helping them see the person behind the stereotype. "She makes us think about things we would prefer putting under the rug," says Halliman. By refusing to back away from conflict, Wing teaches her students to navigate in the unfamiliar waters of different races and cultures.

"Adrien Wing has a high level of credibility with the least advantaged of students," says William Hines, dean of the College of Law. "Because of the prejudices she has overcome to reach her current position, she has the ability to encourage young people -- particularly minorities and women -- to overcome their own obstacles."

But Wing's ability to inspire crosses racial and gender lines. Dan Magel, 84BGS, 86MA, 89JD, a white male and former student of Wing's, sought her out as an advisor because her background includes practicing international law in New York. He was also drawn by her courage. "She is willing to literally put her life on the line for things that she believes in, and I admire that," says Magel. He credits Wing's down-to-earth advice for his success in going into private practice in Los Angeles.

Supporting her convictions with practical action, Wing recently complicated her life even further when she agreed to become the foster mother of a 17-year-old youth. A divorced mother with two young sons of her own, Wing is concerned about the plight of young black males. "They are an endangered species," she says.

When Wing heard that Brooks Barney needed a foster home, she asked her own sons, ten-year-old Che and five-year-old Tuffy, what they thought of the idea. "We've always had a rather large view of family," says Wing, "so the boys were agreeable to having Brooks move in."

Despite soccer practice and homework and other trappings of normal middle-class family life, Wing says she's raising her boys different than many of her white colleagues might raise their own children. Aware of the demographics that show black enrollment in college on the downturn, Wing notes that if current trends continue, there will be only 3 percent black enrollment when her boys reach college age. "I've told them that they're going to have a tremendous responsibility -- because of all the black men who won't be there," says Wing.

Committed to giving Brooks a chance at a better future, Wing wants to see her foster son on his way into college, but she knows that what he really needs is a black male role model. "What can I do?" she asks. "God has given me these boys and I do my best. Good black male role models are extremely rare these days."

So, leading by example, acting on her principles, and speaking out, Wing attacks what she sees as the most threatening problem to black America -- the destruction of the young black male. "I am constantly talking to black professionals and saying, 'We must adopt and foster these children. If not us, who?'"

Many people are cheering new federal crime legislation, the building of more prisons, and state policies that decree "three strikes and you're out," but Wing takes a different stance. "This will only result in the warehousing of even more black youth," she claims.

At a luncheon with Attorney General Janet Reno, Wing accompanied Jim Brown, who took the opportunity to tout programs such as Amer-I-Can as alternatives to incarceration. Back in L.A., she told young men on the streetcorners that Janet Reno has heard of them, that she's a kind person who is anxious to help them find a way off the streets.

Moving out front, moving between cultures, that's where you'll find Adrien Wing.