Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Distinguished Professor of Law
Promise Institute Chair in Human Rights

Kimberlé Crenshaw teaches Civil Rights and other courses in critical race studies and constitutional law. Her primary scholarly interests center around race and the law, and she was a founder and has been a leader in the intellectual movement called Critical Race Theory. She was elected Professor of the Year by the 1991 and 1994 graduating classes. She now splits her time each year between UCLA and the Columbia School of Law.

At the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she received her LL.M., Professor Crenshaw was a William H. Hastie Fellow. She then clerked for Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Professor Crenshaw’s publications include Critical Race Theory (edited by Crenshaw, et al., 1995) and Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment (with Matsuda, et al., 1993).

In 2007, Professor Crenshaw was awarded the Fulbright Chair for Latin America in Brazil.  In 2008, she was nominated an Alphonse Fletcher Fellow.  In the same year she joined the selective group of scholars awarded with an in-residence fellowship at the Center of Advanced Behavioral Studies at Stanford.

You can find out more about Professor Crenshaw’s work through her think tank, The African American Policy Forum, at http://aapf.org/.

Books

  • Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines (edited by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz). University of California Press (2019). 
  • Critical Race Theory (edited by Kimberlé Crenshaw, et al.). New Press (1995). 
  • Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment (with Mari J. Matsuda, et al.). Westview (1993).

Articles and Chapters

  • How Colorblindness Flourished in the Age of Obama, in  Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, (edited by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz, University of California Press, 2019). 
  • Unmasking Colorblindness in the Law: Lessons from the Formation of Critical Race Theory, in  Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, (edited by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz, University of California Press, 2019). 
  • An Intersectional Critique of Tiers of Scrutiny: Beyond “Either/Or” Approaches to Equal Protection (with Devon W. Carbado), 129  The Yale Law Journal Forum 108 (2019). Full Text
  • We Still Have not Learned from Anita Hill’s Testimony, 26  UCLA Women’s Law Journal 17 (2019). Full Text
  • Race Liberalism and the Deradicalization of Racial Reform, 130  Harvard Law Review 2298 (2017). 
  • Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis (with Sumi Cho and Leslie McCall), 38 (4) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 785 (2013). 
  • Keeping Up With Jim Jones: Pioneer, Taskmaster, Architect, Trailblazer, 2013  Wisconsin Law Review703 (2013). Full Text
  • From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally About Women, Race, and Social Control, 59  UCLA Law Review 1418 (2012). Full Text
  • Race, Reform and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law, 12 German Law Review 247 (2011). 
  • Twenty Years of Critical Race Theory: Looking Back to Move Forward, 43  Connecticut Law Review1253-1352 (2011). Full Text
  • Close Encounters of Three Kinds: On Teaching Dominance, Feminism, and Intersectionality, 46  Tulsa Law Review 151-89 (2010). Symposium: Catharine MacKennon. Full Text
  • Framing Affirmative Action, 105  Michigan Law Review First Impressions 123 (2007). 
  • A Black Feminist Critique of Antidicrimination Law, in  Philosophical Problems in the Law, 339-343 4th ed. (edited by David M. Adams, Wadsworth, 2005). 
  • The First Decade: Critical Reflections, or “A Foot in the Closing Door”, 49  UCLA Law Review 1343-72 (2002). 
  • Opening Remarks: Reclaiming Yesterday’s Future, 47  UCLA Law Review 1459-65 (2000). 
  • Playing Race Cards: Constructing a Pro-active Defense of Affirmative Action, 16  National Black Law Journal 196-214 (2000). 
  • Foreword, in  Black Men on Race, Gender and Sexuality: A Critical Reader, (edited by Devon W. Carbado, New York University Press, 1999). 
  • The Contradictions of Mainstream Constitutional Theory (with Gary Peller), 45  UCLA Law Review 1683-1715 (1998). Symposium: Voices of the People:  Essays on Constitutional Democracy In Memory of Professor Julian N. Eule. 
  • Color-blind Dreams and Racial Nightmares: Reconfiguring Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era, in  Birth of A Nation`hood: Gaze, Script and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Trial, (edited by Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky LaCour, Pantheon Books, 1997). 
  • Panel Presentation on Cultural Battery, 25  University of Toledo Law Review 891-901 (1994). 
  • Beyond Racism and Misogyny: Black Feminism and 2 Live Crew, in  Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assualtive Speech and the First Amendment, (Westview, 1993). Also published in Feminist Social Thought: A Reader (edited by Diana Tietjens Meyers, Routledge (1998). 
  • Reel Time/Real Justice (with Gary Peller), 70  Denver University Law Review 283-96 (1993). Colloquy:  Racism in the Wake of the Los Angeles Riots. 
  • Race, Gender, and Sexual Harassment, 65  Southern California Law Review 1467-76 (1992). 
  • Running from Race (Commentary on the Democrats’ Discourse on Race) (with Gary Peller), 7  Taken13-17 (1992). 
  • Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Feminist and Antiracist Appropriations of Anita Hill, in  Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, 402-40 (edited by Toni Morrison, Pantheon Books, 1992). 
  • Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, 43 Stanford Law Review 1241-99 (1991). Women of Color at the Center:  Selections from the Third National Conference on Women of Color and the Law. 
  • Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, 1989  University of Chicago Legal Forum 139-67 (1989). Reprinted in The Politics of Law:  A Progressive Critique 195-217 (2nd ed., edited by David Kairys, Pantheon, 1990). 
  • Toward a Race-Conscious Pedagogy in Legal Education (Foreword: Voting Rights: Strategies for Legal and Community Action), 11  National Black Law Journal 1-14 (1989). 
  • Race, Reform, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law, 101 Harvard Law Review 1331-87 (1988). Reprinted in Critical Legal Thought:  An American-German Debate (edited by Christian Joerges and David M. Trubek, Nomos, 1989).

Other

  • The Court’s Denial of Racial Societal Debt, 40-DEC Human Rights 12 (2013). 
  • Ahead to the Past: The Politics of Plessy, 3 Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir 8 (2001). 
  • Book Review, Stranger Than Fiction, 15 California Lawyer 63-67 (1995). Reviewing Strange Justice:  The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson.