Monday, November 26th
The Front Lines of Gender Justice: Engendering Race
Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
Columbia Law School | 435 West 116th Street | New York, NY 10027
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Jerome Greene Hall - Room 105
Janai Nelson is the Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. She is also a former director of LDF's Political Participation Group and a former NAACP LDF/Fried Frank Fellow. On Monday, November 26th, Ms. Nelson will speak as part of Professor Franke and the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law's Fall 2018 Series "The Front Lines of Gender Justice" on the topic of Engendering Race.
Prior to rejoining LDF's staff, Ms. Nelson was the Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship and Associate Director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John's University School of Law where she also served as a full professor of law. During her eight years at St. John's, Ms. Nelson launched and led an annual student program at the Supreme Court of the United States and assisted in the direction The Ronald H. Brown Prep Program for College Students, an award-winning law school pipeline program, among countless other service activities.
Ms. Nelson is the recipient of the 2013 Derrick A. Bell Award from the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups and was recently named one of Lawyers of Color's 50 Under 50 minority professors making an impact in legal education. Her scholarship centers on domestic and comparative election law, race, and democratic theory and she has taught courses in Election Law and Political Participation, Comparative Election Law, Voting Rights, Professional Responsibility, and Constitutional Law. Ms. Nelson's most recent publication, The Causal Context of Disparate Vote Denial, 54 B.C. L. Rev. 579 (2013), examines Section 2 of Voting Rights Act as a disparate impact standard and the racial dimensions of modern vote denial. Her article, The First Amendment, Equal Protection, and Felon Disfranchisement: A New Viewpoint, 64 Fl. L. Rev. 111 (2013), explores the intersection of the First Amendment and the equal protection clause in reconsidering the constitutionality of felon disfranchisement in the United States.
This lecture is offered as a part of Professor Katherine Franke's Fall 2018 course in Gender Justice. The course provides an in-depth exposure to current advocacy efforts to advance Gender Justice. In the first half of each class session (from 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm), Professor Franke will hosts a guest speaker who is a gender justice advocate working on an issue such as domestic violence, transgender rights, reproductive justice, migrant rights, the criminalization of pregnancy, gender and the Movement for Black Lives, or the decriminalization of sex work. The guest lecture portions of the Gender Justice class are open to the public.
For questions about this program, contact Liz Boylan, Associate Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law and Faculty Assistant to Professor Katherine Franke, at
[email protected] or 212.854.0167.
