Wednesday, October 6th, 2021
12:10pm - 1:10pm ET
In person (Jerome Greene Annex): If you're a member of the Columbia community attending in person, please RSVP using this form. Grab and go lunch will be available. (Note: Due to Columbia University COVID protocols, events are capped at 25 people so attendance is on a first come-first served basis)
Zoom: Register at bit.ly/notyourmule
Chinyere Ezie (Columbia Law School alum and Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights) will discuss her new work on expanding the political power of Black women, with commentary from Columbia Law Professors Kerrel Murray and Katherine Franke. This event is hosted by the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and the American Constitution Society.
Speaker bios:
Chinyere Ezie (Cheen-Yer-Ray Ay-Zee-Ay) is a nationally recognized civil rights lawyer and social justice activist who specializes in constitutional litigation and anti-discrimination work. She is also the originator of #BoycottPrada, a campaign challenging racism in the fashion industry that led to a historic settlement in the wake of Prada’s blackface scandal.
Chinyere is presently a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights where she focuses on racial justice, gender justice, and LGBTQ+ rights. She is also lead counsel for transgender rights activist Ashley Diamond in her pathbreaking lawsuits against the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Kerrel Murray teaches and writes about constitutional law, election law, and race and the law, among other topics. His scholarship interrogates what democracy demands of our legal rules and institutions as well as the role of law in mediating conflict and disagreement. Before joining Columbia Law School in 2021, he completed a two-year fellowship as a post-doc research associate at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Prior to that, Murray served as a fellow at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he co-authored amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple state supreme courts. He was also an associate at Covington & Burling, where he focused on complex civil litigation. He clerked for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and for Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
Katherine Franke is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University, where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. She is among the nation’s leading scholars writing on law, race, religion, and rights. Franke is also the founder and faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project and the ERA Project at Columbia Law School.
Professor Franke is currently leading a team that is researching Columbia Law School’s relationship to slavery and its legacies.
