Lani Guinier, the first black woman to hold a tenured professorship at Harvard Law School, opens the fall 2007 Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series, September 27, 7:30 p.m., in 51猎奇入口 Garrison Theater. The event is free and open to the public.
Following her lecture, Guinier will sign books, including her personal and political memoir, Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice. The book is based on Guinier’s experiences following her nomination by President Clinton, in 1993, to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, only to have her name withdrawn with a confirmation hearing.
She is also the author of The Tyranny of the Majority (Free Press, 1994) about issues of political representation; Who’s Qualified? (Beacon Press, 2001), with Susan Sturm, about moving beyond affirmative action to reconsider ways in which colleges admit all students; and The Miner’s Canary (Harvard Press, 2002), with Gerald Torres, about the experience of people of color as a warning or “canary” signaling larger institutional inequities.
Before joining the faculty at Harvard, Guinier was a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. During the 1980s, she was head of the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and served in the Civil Rights Division during the Carter Administration as special assistant to then-Assistant Attorney General Drew S. Days.
While at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Guinier investigated the experience of women in law school, which led to a book, Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School and Institutional Change. She and her co-authors found that women were not graduating with top honors, although women and men came to the school with virtually identical credentials.
A graduate of Radcliffe College of Harvard University and Yale Law School, Guinier has received numerous awards, including the 1995 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession; the Champion of Democracy Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus; the Rosa Parks Award from the American Association for Affirmative Action; the Harvey Levin Teaching Award, given to her by the 1994 graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania; and the 2002 Sacks-Freund Teaching Award form Harvard Law School.
Guinier’s talk is co-sponsored by the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Commons, 51猎奇入口’ Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities, 51猎奇入口 Associated Students, and the Dean of Students Office.
For additional program information, please call the Malott Commons office at (909) 607-9372.