Lectures
Beginning in 2010, the Center on Law, Equality and Race has brought nationally recognized speakers to UCI Law.
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Nolan L. Cabrera & Robert S. Chang
February 26, 2026
UC Irvine School of LawProfessors Bob Chang (UC Irvine School of Law) and Nolan Cabrera (University of Arizona) discussed Banned: The Fight for Mexican American Studies in the Streets and in the Courts (Cambridge University Press, 2025). This book details the state-sponsored racism that led to the elimination of Mexican American Studies in Tucson, Arizona, and the grassroots and legal resistance that followed. Prof. Chang is one of the nation’s leading scholars on issues of race and interethnic relations, and one of the most recognized voices on Asian Americans and the law. Professor Nolan Cabrera is a nationally recognized expert in the areas of racism/anti-racism on college campuses, Whiteness, and ethnic studies.
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Jennifer M. Chacón, Susan Bibler Coutin & Stephen Lee
Jennifer M. Chacón (Stanford Law), Susan Bibler Coutin (UC Irvine), and Stephen Lee (UC Irvine Law) discussed their book, Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting Failures of Immigration Law (Stanford University Press, 2024). The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was supposed to be a stepping stone, a policy innovation announced by the White House designed to put pressure on Congress for a broader, lasting set of legislative changes. Those changes never materialized, and the people who hoped to benefit from them have been forced to navigate a tense and contradictory policy landscape ever since, haunted by these unfulfilled promises. Legal Phantoms tells their story.
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Dylan Penningroth
February 3, 2025
UC Irvine School of LawProfessor Dylan Penningroth discussed his book, Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (Liveright, 2023). Drawing on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses across the nation, Before the Movement reveals that African Americans, far from being ignorant about law until the middle of the twentieth century, have thought about, talked about, and used it going as far back as even the era of slavery.
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Matthew Clair
April 4, 2022
UC Irvine School of LawMatthew Clair discussed his book, Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court (Princeton University Press, 2020). Privilege and Punishment draws needed attention to the injustices that are perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship in today’s criminal courts, and describes the reforms needed to correct them. Dr. Matthew Clair is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and (by courtesy) the Law School at Stanford University. His scholarship broadly examines how cultural meanings and interactions reflect, reproduce, and challenge various dimensions of social inequality, legal violence, and injustice.
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Jennifer Eberhardt
October 4, 2019
UC Irvine School of Social SciencesStanford Professor Jennifer Eberhardt discussed her book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. Dr. Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford and a recipient of a 2014 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named one of Foreign Policy‘s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. She also is co-founder and co-director of SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions), a Stanford Center that brings together researchers and practitioners to address significant social problems.
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Meera Deo
February 26, 2019
UC Irvine School of LawMeera E. Deo, Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the Director of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), discussed her book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia (Stanford University Press, 2019). The book draws from Professor Deo’s landmark Diversity in Legal Academia (DLA) project, the first formal empirical study to investigate raceXgender challenges and opportunities facing law professors from diverse backgrounds around the US. Professor Deo’s data expose ongoing biases—but also individual strategies and structural solutions to maximize success.
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Paul Butler
February 13, 2018
UCI School of Law
The Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown Law and former federal prosecutor discussed his book, Chokehold: Policing Black Men (The New Press, 2017), examining the systematic criminalization of African American men—in spite of empirical data demonstrating that they are not responsible for the majority of violent offenses—and the ways in which that system might be disrupted. -
James Forman Jr.
September 27, 2017
UCI School of Law
The Professor of Law at Yale Law School discussed his book Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017), examining the aggressive policies adopted by African American government and law enforcement officials through the last half-century's "war on crime," and their lasting effects on black communities. -
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve
April 19, 2017
UCI School of Law
The Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Temple University discussed her book, "Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court," examining the culture of racial abuse in Chicago-Cook County Courthouse. -
Angela Harris
March 10, 2016
UCI School of Law
The Distinguished Professor of Law, Boochever and Bird Endowed Chair for the Study and Teaching of Freedom of Equality at UC Davis School of Law, will present “From Equality to Freedom: Food, Sovereignty, and the New Black Agrarian Movement” -
Osagie K. Obasogie
November 10, 2015
UCI School of Law
The Professor of Law at UC Hastings College of Law will discuss his book, Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind, awarded the 2015 Herbert Jacob Book Prize by the Law and Society Association. -
Russell Robinson
Friday, March 20, 2015
UCI School of Law
The Distinguished Haas Chair in LGBT Equity Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law will present his paper "Divergent Identities," which argues that the debate over same-sex marriage and LGBT equality and inclusion more generally has incompletely and insufficiently considered the importance of gender. -
Tonya Brito
Friday, February 20, 2015
UCI School of LawThe Burrus-Bascom Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School presented her paper, “I Do for My Kids: Negotiating Race, Class and Gender in Child Support Enforcement Proceedings.”
Co-Sponsored by the Center in Law, Society and Culture
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Daria Roithmayr
Friday, Nov. 21, 2014
UCI School of LawThe George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Chair in Law (USC Law) discussed her book Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage (NYU Press 2014).
A reception and book signing followed the lecture. -
Ian F. Haney López
April 7, 2014
UCI School of LawThe John H. Boalt Professor of Law (Berkeley Law) discussed his newly released book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (Oxford University Press 2014).
A reception and book signing followed the lecture. -
Devon W. Carbado
Feb. 27, 2013
UCI School of LawThe UCLA Law professor discussed his book (with Duke Law Professor Mitu Gulati), Acting White?: Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America (Oxford University Press).
The event was co-sponsored by CLEAR and Black Law Students Alliance (BLSA). -
Daniel Kanstroom
Oct. 25, 2012
UCI School of LawThe Boston College Professor of Law and Director of the International Human Rights Program discussed his book Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora (Oxford University Press).
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Kenji Yoshino
Jan. 13, 2011
UCI School of LawThe Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU came to UCI Law as part of CLEAR’s lecture series “Unpacking Diversity.” Prof. Yoshino discussed his book, Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (Random House 2006).