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Patricia J. Williams
James L. Rohr Professor of Law, Columbia University
James L. Rohr Professor of Law, Columbia University
Patricia J. Williams, Rohr Law Professor at Columbia University, is an imaginative critical theorist of race, class, gender and feminist jurisprudence in her books and in her column, 'Diary of a Mad Lawyer,' The Nation. The granddaughter of a slave and a white southern lawyer, she has held a MacArthur fellowship. With degrees from Wellesley and Harvard Law, she has taught in the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College, University of Wisconsin (law and women's studies), and worked as a consumer advocate in the office of the City Attorney in Los Angeles. Her distinguished law career includes serving on the Advisory Council for the Medgar Evers Center for Law and Social Justice (CUNY) and on the board of governors for the Society of American Law Teachers. In 1993, Harvard University Press published Williams's The Alchemy of Race & Rights. Other books include The Rooster's Egg (Harvard, 1995), Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (FS&G, 1997) and Open House: On Family Food, Friends, Piano Lessons and The Search for a Room of My Own (FS&G, 2004).
