Lani Guinier

Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, was the first woman of color tenured at Harvard Law School. Before that appointment, she was a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Educated at Radcliffe College and Yale Law School, Lani worked in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice and then headed the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1980s. Lani has published many scholarly articles and books, including The Tyranny of the Majority (1994); Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School and Institutional Change (1997) (with co-authors Michelle Fine and Jane Balin); Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice (1998); and The Miner's Canary:Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (2002) (co-authored with Gerald Torres); Meritocracy, Inc.: How Wealth Became Merit, Class Became Race and Higher Education Became a Gift From the Poor to the Rich (Harvard University Press 2007). In her scholarly writings and in op-ed pieces, she has addressed issues of race, gender, and democratic decision making, and sought new ways of approaching questions like affirmative action while calling for candid public discourse on these topics. Lani’s excellence in teaching was honored by the 1994 Harvey Levin Teaching Award from the graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the 2002 Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence from Harvard Law School.