Cheryl I. Harris
Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
Cheryl I. Harris is the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at UCLA School of Law, where she has taught since 1998. She co-founded the UCLA Critical Race Studies Program and is the author of the foundational article Whiteness as Property, published in the Harvard Law Review. She received the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018 and the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. Before entering academia, she worked at a criminal defense firm and served as a senior legal advisor in Chicago's City Attorney's office.
Teaching Style
Professor Harris is a legendary classroom teacher who uses the Socratic method to guide students through the deep structural dimensions of race in American constitutional law. She cold-calls with high expectations but creates a classroom environment where students feel safe engaging with difficult questions about race, power, and law. Her teaching builds carefully from doctrinal foundations to critical analysis, asking students to question how seemingly neutral legal frameworks may reinforce existing hierarchies.
Cold Call Tips
- 1Read the cases with attention to how they construct and deploy racial categories
- 2Be prepared to discuss equal protection doctrine from both doctrinal and critical perspectives
- 3Understand the historical context of the cases, including the social and political conditions that produced them
- 4Think about the difference between formal and substantive equality and be ready to discuss which approach different cases adopt
Areas of Expertise
Education
- J.D., Northwestern University School of Law
- B.A., Wellesley College
Notable Publications
- Whiteness as Property (Harvard Law Review)
- Founding scholarship of UCLA's Critical Race Studies Program
Research Interests
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