Patricia J. Williams, professor of law, columnist, and author, will lecture on issues of racism, as part of the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series, at Scripps College on September 25 at 7:30 in Garrison Theater, Scripps College Performing Arts Center, as part of the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series. This event is free and open to the public.
Williams writes the monthly “Diary of a Mad Law Professor” for Nation magazine. Her wry, witty columns cover broad issues of social justice, including rhetoric of the war on terror, race, ethnicity, gender, all aspects of civil rights law, bioethics and eugenics, forensic uses of DNA, and comparative issues of class and culture in the U.S., France, and Britain.
Williams is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University School of Law. Before entering academia, she practiced law, as a consumer advocate and Deputy City Attorney for the City of Los Angeles, and as a staff attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
Her newest book, Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and a Search for a Room of My Own, is a personal collection of stories, essays, anecdotes, and biography. “Racism is an enormously subtle perceptual matter. Understanding its conventions involves figuring out how to insinuate one’s way through all sorts of well-guarded hierarchies…Finding a door in is a trick of social vision as much as it is of legal remedy or political recourse,” says Williams.
This event is co-sponsored by the Malott Commons Office, Scripps Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities, and the Dean of Students Office. A book signing in the theater lobby will follow the lecture.
For more information, contact the Malott Commons Office at (909) 607-9372.