Pioneering Critical Race Theorist Cheryl I. Harris Brings Expertise to UC Law SF

Professor Cheryl I. Harris has spent decades working to understand the systems and structures that perpetuate inequality, and this year she will share her knowledge and insights with law students as a visiting professor at UC Law San Francisco.

Renowned for her groundbreaking work, Professor Harris of UCLA Law has been at the forefront of scholarship on racial inequality for over 30 years. Her seminal 1993 article, “Whiteness as Property,” explored historically how whiteness, like property, was constructed around the right to exclude. She wrote that rights to property were articulated through race, excluding Indigenous forms of property relations, while white racial hierarchy continues to promise the value of whiteness, even as being white does not insulate people from being poor or exploited. Her work remains a cornerstone in the study of race, law, and justice today.

Welcoming a Visionary Scholar to UC Law SF

This year, Harris takes on the role of the Wiley Manuel Visiting Scholar and Professor with UC Law SF’s Center for Racial and Economic Justice (CREJ).

“Professor Harris is one of the reasons I left civil rights law practice and became a professor,” said CREJ Co-Director Shauna Marshall. “Her pathbreaking work on race and economic justice inspired a generation of law teachers to think critically and creatively about the way to bring about racial justice in this country. It is truly thrilling to have her a part of CREJ next semester.”

As a visiting professor, Harris will deliver the Mathew O. Tobriner Memorial Lecture and keynote address at CREJ’s Racial Capitalism Symposium on Feb. 7. She will also teach a spring seminar on Critical Race Theory (CRT). Harris notes that following the nationwide mobilization for racial justice in 2020, CRT has been fiercely attacked, mischaracterized and distorted.

“We frequently see a historic pattern where initiatives designed to achieve some degree of racial reform are met with significant reaction,” Harris said, citing the violence, terror, and Jim Crow laws that followed Reconstruction in the late 19th century as an historic example.

A Legacy of Change-making in Litigation, Government, and Academia

Harris, a graduate of Wellesley College and Northwestern School of Law, started her career as an appellate and trial litigator at criminal defense firms in Chicago. Through her pro bono work, she played a key role in significant civil and human rights initiatives, including police oversight measures and anti-apartheid sanctions legislation.

Following the election of Chicago’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington, Harris left private practice to become a senior legal advisor in the city attorney’s office, contributing to reform efforts that enhanced government accountability, transparency, and racial equity.

By 1990, Harris transitioned to academia, starting at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Notably, through a series of convenings she helped organize, she worked to connect American legal scholars with South African lawyers during the creation of South Africa’s first democratic constitution, ratified in 1994.

She has also been involved in human rights delegations in conflict zones such as Northern Ireland and Haiti.

Harris joined the faculty at UCLA Law in 1998, where she co-founded the Critical Race Studies (CRS) Program. She said the program, which she directed in its formative years, has fostered important scholarship and made a lasting impact on legal education. Programs like CRS and UC Law SF’s CREJ are particularly vital right now, she added, as similar initiatives face government bans in other states, creating “hostile zones where certain ideas are out of bounds.”

Advancing Dialogue on Racial and Economic Justice

CREJ Co-Director Thalia González said Harris’ work at UC Law SF this year furthers the center’s goal of bringing to campus influential thinkers on issues of racial and economic justice.

“A core mission of the Center on Racial and Economic Justice has always been to foster a dynamic and critical intellectual community at UC Law SF,” González said. “CREJ is thrilled that students and faculty alike will be able to engage with Professor Harris, who has been such a profound leader in legal practice and academia, on some of the most pressing and challenging racial and economic justice issues in contemporary American law.”

Reflecting on her path, Harris shared that she originally planned to become a civil rights lawyer. What drew her to academia was the glaring disconnect she noticed in how racism was conceived narrowly in law and politics as consisting of overt acts of bigotry. She said this ignored the way ostensibly race-neutral decisions reproduce and maintain a profoundly unequal racial status quo.

“I thought there were some contributions I could make to challenge the prevailing colorblind analysis of race and racism that simplistically treated race as skin color and racism as only intentional acts,” she said. “I wanted to address how racism was embedded in ordinary social processes and structures in order to really address inequality.”

Fostering Thoughtful Discussion of Challenging Issues

In her upcoming seminar, Harris, an award winning teacher, will guide students in exploring questions such as why racial inequality persists in a society that has formally outlawed discrimination, the role of law both in challenging and maintaining racial hierarchy, and the intersection among forms of inequality

“I hope they take away from this class a deep curiosity about the topic and find ideas that inspire them as they go forward,” Harris said, adding that she also wants students to feel they can discuss difficult subjects while respecting different points of view.

CREJ Co-Director Alina Ball said the College is thrilled to have a scholar of Harris’ stature teaching a subject that she helped shape through her groundbreaking work.

“Professor Harris is more than a gifted educator—she is a tour de force,” Ball said. “Her passion for teaching and steadfast belief in her students’ potential have inspired several of her former students, including myself, to pursue legal academia. She encourages critical thinking, nurtures student growth, and engages each student with compassion and respect for their intellectual contributions.”

Harris credits pioneering scholars like Derrick Bell, the late Harvard law professor, whose work was at the core of CRT, for sparking her interest in the field. She added that she hopes her own work will inspire future generations.

“I hope the work I’ve done in conjunction with my colleagues will provide the kind of fuel for another generation of scholars and activists to push forward,” she said. “I hope that people will find within it some inspiration to articulate their own vision.”