Introducing the First Annual Critical Race Theory Conference at Harvard Law School:
“Movement Lawyering: Lessons From and For Critical Race Theory”
Friday, April 12 to Saturday, April 13, 2019
Join us at Harvard Law School on April 12-13, 2019 for an insightful and inspiring event. Derrick Bell originally founded CRT on the principle that it would be used to guide lawyers, scholars, activists, and communities to work together to build social movements to dismantle systems of oppression. In 1981, a group of Harvard Law students, led by Kimberlé Crenshaw, organized an “Alternative Course” on race and law at Harvard Law School to boycott a mini-course on race offered by HLS administration as a failed attempt to appease students demanding a discussion of race and law. The Alternative Course was in many ways the first institutionalized expression of CRT. Since then scholars, lawyers, and activists have utilized CRT principles to conceptualize how systems of oppression are designed to marginalize peoples at the intersection of race and their other identities, including gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, and class. Today, lawyers are still left grappling with how to dismantle these systems of subordination in partnership with communities, as well as the relevance of CRT in guiding that work. Today, 37 years later, Harvard Law students are carrying forward the critical tradition sparked by the 1981 student organizers by organizing the first CRT Conference at HLS. The conference seeks to re-ignite this conversation by exploring how CRT today contributes to the power building efforts of modern social movements led by communities and lawyers working to dismantle systems of subordination at the intersection of race and other marginalized identities.
Conference Sessions
(1) CRT: Origins, Developments, and Futures
(2) The Alternative Course: Reclaiming Student Organizing, Power, and Action
(3) Models of Effective Movement Lawyering for Racial Liberation
(4) Addressing Intimate partner, gender, and sexual violence in Mixed-Status Communities Through Movement Lawyering
(5) Scaling Movement Lawyering with(out) Critical Race Theory
(6) Various workshops with scholars, activists, and movement lawyers.
Save the date and join scholars, lawyers, activists, practitioners, and friends