Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights advocate and pioneer of the critical race theory, has recently been named the 2016-17 winner of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize by Brandeis University. Crenshaw is known for her extensive work with civil rights in relation to race and gender.
Brandeis University awards the Gittler Prize annually to an individual “to recognize outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations,” according to the Brandeis University website. The award includes a prize of $25,000 and a medal. The winner gives a lecture at Brandeis upon accepting the award and spends two or three days on campus. Crenshaw will be on campus in October 2017.
Crenshaw is one of the founders and leaders of critical race theory, which examines how society and culture intersect with race and law. In 1989, Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality,” a concept that integrates social identity with the intersection of categories including race, gender, sexual orientation, ability and class.
Crenshaw is a professor at the UCLA School of Law, where she teaches civil rights in relation to race and the law, according to her biography on the UCLA School of Law website. She is also a professor at Columbia Law School, where she is the director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, which she founded in 2011, as stated on the Columbia Law School website.
Crenshaw co-founded the African-American Policy Forum (AAPF) in 1966, which is an “innovative think tank that connects academics, activists and policy-makers to promote efforts to dismantle structural inequality,” according to the AAPF website. She writes for Ms. Magazine and has been a commentator on NPR’s “The Tavis Smiley Show.”
Some of Crenshaw’s publications include “Critical Race Theory” and “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color.” Her work has also been published in several law journals, including The Harvard Law Review, The Stanford Law Review and The National Black Law Journal.
Crenshaw has also been the recipient of several awards including the Fulbright Chair for Latin America in Brazil in 2007 and the ACLU Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellowship from 2005 to 2007. She was also nominated an Alphonse Fletcher Fellow in 2008. Crenshaw was awarded with an in-residence fellowship with a selective group of scholars at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science at Stanford University in 2008-2009. Crenshaw was elected Professor of the Year at the UCLA Law School in 1991 and 1994.
Dean of Harvard Law School, Martha Minow, was the recipient of the award last year. Her lecture called for students to be “upstanders” rather than bystanders when facing social injustices. Students from the Ford Hall 2015 movement and from Harvard Law School protested the ceremony. The group, Reclaim Harvard Law, felt that Minow had not been receptive to their demands for a more diverse faculty and removal of the slaveholding Royall family’s crest from the law school seal. Protesters asked what Minow was doing to “upstand” against injustice at Harvard.
The Harvard Law students had been occupying Fireside Lounge in the Caspersen Student Center since Feb. 15. They renamed the center Belinda Hall after a former slave who won reparations in a suit against the Royall family. Students believed Minow had done little to communicate and engage with the movement.
Reclaim Harvard Law parallelled Brandeis’ Ford Hall movement that occupied the Bernstein Marcus building for 12 days in November of 2015. The Ford Hall movement resulted in a Diversity and Inclusion Action plan. Elements of that plan, including the appointment of a Chief Diversity Officer, are still being carried out.
