Kimberlé Crenshaw

(J.D. Harvard; L.L.M. University of Wisconsin; B.A. Cornell University)

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Kimberlé Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School, is a leading authority in the area of Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law.  Her articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, National Black Law Journal, Stanford Law Review and Southern California Law Review. She is the founding coordinator of the Critical Race Theory Workshop, and the co-editor of the volume, Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Shaped the Movement. Crenshaw has lectured widely on race matters, addressing audiences across the country as well as in Europe, India, Africa and South America.

A specialist on race and gender equality, she has facilitated workshops for human rights activists in Brazil and in India, and for constitutional court judges in South Africa. Her groundbreaking work on “Intersectionality” has traveled globally and was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. Crenshaw authored the background paper on Race and Gender Discrimination for the United Nation’s World Conference on Racism, served as the Rapporteur for the conference’s Expert Group on Gender and Race Discrimination, and coordinated NGO efforts to ensure the inclusion of gender in the WCAR Conference Declaration.

Crenshaw has worked extensively on a variety of issues pertaining to gender and race in the domestic arena including violence against women, structural racial inequality, and affirmative action.  She has served as a member of the National Science Foundation’s committee to research violence against women and has consulted with leading foundations, social justice organizations and corporations to advance their race and gender equity initiatives.

In 1996, she co-founded the African American Policy Forum to house a variety of projects designed to deliver research-based strategies to better advance social inclusion.  Among the Forum’s projects are the Affirmative Action Research and Policy Consortium and the Multiracial Literacy and Leadership Initiative.  In partnership with the Aspen Roundtable for Community Change, Crenshaw facilitated workshops on racial equity for hundreds of community leaders and organizations throughout the country.  With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Crenshaw facilitates the Bellagio Project, an international network of scholars working in the field of social inclusion from five continents. Currently, she serves as Committee Chair for the U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Promote Racial and Ethnic Equality, an initiative of the U.S. State Department. A founding member of the Women’s Media Initiative, Crenshaw writes for Ms. Magazine, the Nation and other print media, and has appeared as a regular commentator on “The Tavis Smiley Show,” NPR, and MSNBC.

Twice awarded Professor of the Year at UCLA Law School, Crenshaw received the Lucy Terry Prince Unsung Heroine Award presented by the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, and the ACLU Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellowship from 2005-07.  Crenshaw has received the Fulbright Distinguished Chair for Latin America, the Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship, and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in 2009 and a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 2010. Currently, Crenshaw is the Faculty Director of the Critical Race Studies program at UCLA Law School.

Luke Charles Harris

(Ph.D. Princeton University; J.D., L.L.M. Yale University; B.A. Saint Joseph’s University)

Dr. Luke Charles Harris is the former Chair of the Department of Political Science at Vassar College, where he teaches American Politics and Constitutional Law; and the Co-founder of the African American Policy Forum (Policy Forum). The Policy Forum was developed as part of an ongoing effort to promote women’s rights in the context of struggles for racial justice. It is a media-monitoring think-tank and information clearinghouse that works to bridge the gap between scholarly research and public debates on questions of inequality, discrimination and injustice.

Harris earned a B.A. at Saint Joseph’s University, a J.D. and an LL.M at Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton. He clerked for the late A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., the distinguished legal historian and former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; served for two years as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Warwick, School of Law in Coventry England; for one year as a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Sociology; and for two years as a junior associate in the Litigation Department at Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett in New York City, before beginning his teaching career at Vassar in 1992.

An expert in the field of Critical Race Theory, Harris has authored a series of important essays on questions of racial and gender equality in contemporary America; and was the co-writer and chief consultant for Kathe Sandler’s 1993 award-winning documentary film, A Question of Color.  A Question of Color premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and was released theatrically at the Film Forum in New York City before being aired on nationwide TV by PBS in 1994. It is currently being distributed by California NewsReel.

In 2003, Harris supervised and coauthored an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the “Committee of Concerned Black Graduates of Accredited Law Schools” in a landmark Supreme Court case: Grutter v. Bollinger (see “Prologue: Brief of Amici Curiae on Behalf of Concerned Black Graduates of ABA Accredited Law Schools,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 2004). More recently, his ground breaking essay, “Affirmative Action as Equalizing Opportunity: Challenging the Myth of Preferential Treatment,” coauthored with Uma Narayan, was republished in Hugh LaFollette’s, Ethics in Practice, Blackwell Press (Oxford England), 3rd edition, 2006.  For the academic year of 2008/2009, Prof. Harris was nominated a senior fellow at the Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. During his residency, one of his scholarly projects will be the completion of a book entitled, The Meaning of Equality in “Post-Apartheid” America.

Chandra Bhatnagar

 Chandra Bhatnagar is a Staff Attorney with the Human Rights Program of the ACLU, where he is part of a new group of human rights defenders using international mechanisms, domestic litigation, public education, legal advocacy, and organizing to hold the United States government accountable for its human rights abuses under universally recognized human rights principles. Prior to joining the ACLU, Mr. Bhatnagar was a Skadden Fellow with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund where he directed the South Asian Worker’s Project for Human Rights , a community-based project providing legal assistance to low-wage workers from South Asia using a human rights perspective. Previously, he was the Assistant Director of Columbia University’s “Bringing Human Rights Home Project,” and worked on human rights issues including conditions affecting post 9-11 detainees and efforts to organize a coalition of human rights defenders in the United States. Mr. Bhatnagar has also worked internationally, partnering with a leading NGO in India in applying human rights standards to their anti-child labor/bonded labor campaigns and domestically with the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he did immigrant’s rights work and anti-police brutality organizing, and served as the interim Director of the Ella Baker Summer Intern Program. He received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an LL.M. in international human rights from Columbia Law School.

Devon Carbado

Devon Carbado, who serves as the Vice Dean of Faculty,  teaches Constitutional Criminal Procedure, Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, and Criminal Adjudication at the UCLA School of Law. He was elected Professor of the Year by the UCLA School of Law Class of 2000 and was recently awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from Harvard Law School’s Black Law Students Association. At Harvard, Professor Carbado was editor-in-chief of The Harvard Black Letter Law Journal, a member of the Board of Student Advisors, and winner of the Northeast Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition. After receiving his law degree, he joined Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles as an associate before his appointment as a Faculty Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law. Professor Carbado writes in the areas of critical race theory, employment discrimination, criminal procedure, constitutional law, and identity, and is currently studying African-American responses to the internment of Japanese Americans. He is the Director of the Critical Race Studies Concentration at the Law School and a faculty associate of the Center for African American Studies.

Marianne L. Engelman-Lado

Marianne Engelman-Lado currently is part of the legal staff at Earthjustice, where she is working on environmental issues affecting human health. From 1999 to 2009, she served as General Counsel to New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), where she oversaw the litigation and advocacy program, focusing on issues of disability rights, environmental justice, and access to health care. Marianne has taught at Seton Hall University School of Law and graduate and undergraduate level courses in public administration, health policy, and education law at Baruch College. She holds a B.A. in government from Cornell University, a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University.

Marianne was previously a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked on litigation and advocacy within LDF’s Poverty & Justice Program, representing clients attempting to break barriers of access to health care and quality education. In this capacity Marianne was responsible for developing a health care docket aimed at addressing the scarcity of health resources in medically underserved communities; discriminatory practices by the health care industry, including nursing homes, and also managed care organizations; lack of access to reproductive health services; and related issues of environmental justice. She also organized the legal effort in the late 1990s to save the public hospitals in New York City. The education docket included case development, trial, and appellate work at the state and federal level to guarantee equal educational opportunity across racial and class lines.

M. Thandabantu Iverson

Prior to joining the Labor Studies faculty, M. Thandabantu Iverson served as a health and safety organizer on the international staff of the Service Employees’ International Union. Thandabantu brings considerable workplace experience to his teaching, research, and service; having worked as a stage hand with the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE); as a coal miner with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA); as an auto worker with the United Auto Workers (UAW); and as a steel worker in the United Steel Workers of America (USWA). Thandabantu has also participated in a number of social movements within the United States, including the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements; the Vietnam Anti-War Movement; and the African Liberation Support Coalition. Thandabantu’s training in political science and women’s studies contribute to his passion for research and teaching on the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class in U.S. work, politics, culture, and community.

Janine Jackson

Janine Jackson is Program Director for FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting,) the national media watch group, and producer/host of FAIR’s nationally syndicated radio show, “CounterSpin”. She co-edited The FAIR Reader: An EXTRA! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s (Westview).

Jackson’s articles have appeared in various publications, including In These Times and the UAW’s Solidarity, and in books including Civil Rights Since 1787 (New York University Press) and Censored 2000 (Seven Stories Press). She has appeared on ABC’s “Nightline” and CNBC’s “Inside Business” among other shows.

Jackson is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and has an M.A. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research.

George Lipsitz

George Lipsitz is Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of eight books including THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS and A LIFE IN THE STRUGGLE. Lipsitz serves on the Board of Directors of the National Fair Housing Alliance.

Lydia Mallett, Ph.D.

Lydia G. Mallett, Ph.D. is Vice President of Staffing and Diversity, Tyco International, where she has responsibility for the strategic design and implementation in support of the organization’s total staffing requirements. In addition Dr. Mallett is responsible for developing and implementing a corporate-wide diversity strategy addressing issues such as workforce representation and retention, and work-life effectiveness.

In that role, she also counsels Tyco’s senior executives in helping them devise and carry out diversity initiatives aligned with business objectives. Prior to joining Tyco in 2004, she was Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at General Mills where she developed and implemented a senior management accountability strategy and expanded a senior management co-mentoring strategy for women and people of color.

Ms. Mallett holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a Master’s degree in Labor/Industrial Relations, and a Doctorate degree in Social Psychology, all from Michigan State University.
She is active with several organizations, including the Executive Leadership Council, National Coalition of 100 Black Women (previous National President), the Conference Board’s Council on Work Force Diversity and is a Board Member of the Feminist Press.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Ph.D.

Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies and Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center Spelman College

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, PH.D. is founding director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center (since 1981) and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College. She is also an adjunct professor at Emory University’s Institute for Women’s Studies where she teaches graduate courses in their doctoral program.

At the age of sixteen, Guy-Sheftall entered Spelman College where she majored in English and minored in secondary education. After graduation with honors, she attended Wellesley College for a fifth year of study in English. After a year at Wellesley, she entered Atlanta University to pursue a master’s degree in English. Her thesis was entitled “Faulkner’s Treatment of Women in His Major Novels.” A year later Guy-Sheftall began her first teaching job in the Department of English at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1971 she returned to her alma mater, Spelman College, and joined the English Department.

Guy-Sheftall has published a number of texts within African American and Women’s Studies which include the first anthology on Black women’s literature, Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature (Doubleday, 1979), which she coedited with Roseann P. Bell and Bettye Parker Smith; her dissertation, Daughters of Sorrow: Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1880-1920 (Carlson, 1991); and Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995). Her most recent publication is an anthology she coedited with Rudolph P. Byrd entitled Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality (Indiana University Press, 2001). She has also completed with Johnnetta Betsch Cole a monograph, Gender Talk: The Struggle for Equality in African American Communities which was be published by Random House in February 2003. In 1983 she became founding editor of Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women which was devoted exclusively to the experiences of African descent.

Guy-Sheftall is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, among them a National Kellogg Fellowship; a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for dissertations in Women’s Studies; and Spelman’s Presidential Faculty Award for outstanding scholarship. She is a member of the Board of Trustees at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has been involved with the national women’s studies movement since its inception and provided leadership for the establishment of the first women’s studies major at a historically Black college. Beyond the academy, she has been involved in a number of advocacy organizations which include the National Black Women’s Health Project, the National Council for Research on Women, and the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, on whose boards she serves. She teaches women’s studies courses, including feminist theory and global Black feminisms.

Alvin Starks

Alvin Louis Starks is a racial justice advocate and researcher that works in the areas of philanthropy and civil rights advocacy to address issues of systemic inequality and discrimination.  His interests and work seeks to promote a new generation of social justice ideas, leadership and strategies that recognizes the intersections of identities to promote racial justice and cross movement building opportunities among organizations.

For over 8 years, Alvin worked at the Open Society Institute and created and directed the foundation’s Racial Justice Initiative that explicitly supported organizations that secured social and civil opportunities for marginalized communities of color. In 2007, he led the creation of the foundation’s black males initiative that addressed issues of de facto discrimination and social exclusion.  Alvin formerly held the position of Senior Program Officer for Racial Justice, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at the Arcus Foundation.  There his work focused on the building the foundation’s mission to advance rights and equity through the intersections of race, sexuality and gender identity.

As a creative strategist and consultant, Alvin continues to work with several foundations, academic institutions, policy think tanks and civil rights institutions that share a common thread interest in advancing human rights and social equity for low-income communities of color.  In late 2009, Alvin began working with the NAACP where he supports new advocacy projects at the national level and leverages philanthropic resources to support the institution.

Alvin received his formal education from the State University of New York and Columbia University in New York City.  He sits on several non-profit boards and has received numerous awards and fellowships for his leadership in philanthropy and racial justice.   Alvin lives in Brooklyn and wants to write a book on post-civil rights era advocacy.

Tim Wise

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S., and has been called, “One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation,” by best-selling author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise has spoken in 48 states, and on over 400 college campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale and Columbia, and has spoken to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. He has also trained corporate, government, entertainment, military and law enforcement officials on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions, and has served as a consultant for plaintiff’s attorneys in federal discrimination cases in New York and Washington State.

Wise is the 2008 Oliver L. Brown Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues at Washburn University, in Topeka, Kansas: an honor named for the lead plaintiff in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 2005, Wise served as an adjunct faculty member at the Smith College School for Social Work, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he co-taught a Master’s level class on Racism in the U.S. In 2001, Wise trained journalists to eliminate racial bias in reporting, as a visiting faculty-in-residence at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. In 2005 and 2006, Wise provided training on issues of racial privilege and institutional bias at the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), at Patrick Air Force Base. From 1999-2003, Wise was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute, in Nashville, and in the early ’90s was Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized for the purpose of defeating neo-Nazi political candidate, David Duke.

Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White. A collection of his essays, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male, will be published in the Fall of 2008, and his fourth book, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Race and Whiteness in the Age of Obama, will be released in Spring, 2009. He has contributed chapters or essays to 20 books, and is one of several persons featured in White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories, from Duke University Press. He received the 2001 British Diversity Award for best essay on race issues, and his writings have appeared in dozens of popular, professional and scholarly journals. Wise has been a guest on hundreds of radio and television programs, worldwide.

Wise has a B.A. in Political Science from Tulane University, where his anti-apartheid work received global attention and the thanks of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He received training in methods for dismantling racism from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, in New Orleans. He and his wife Kristy are the proud parents of two daughters.