Keynote Speakers
The IDEAL Conference welcomes a number of nationally recognized speakers. Among them:
Closing Keynote Session
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Civil Rights Activist & Feminist
Crenshaw is popularly known for her development of “intersectionality,” “Critical Race Theory,” and the #SayHerName campaign, and is a leading authority on civil rights; Black feminist legal theory; and race, racism, and the law. She is the most cited woman legal scholar in the history of the law and was named one of the ten most important thinkers in the world by Prospect magazine in 2019. In addition, Crenshaw writes a column for The New Republic and is a frequent contributor on MSNBC and NPR.
Crenshaw is the co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, a gender and racial justice legal think tank, the founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School. She also serves as the Promise Institute Professor at the UCLA Law School and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She hosts the popular podcast Intersectionality Matters!, and since March 2020, has moderated the widely impactful webinar series Under The Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that the Twin Pandemics Lay Bare, which over five months has convened almost 20 times to discuss the lethal intersection of pre-existing inequalities, opportunistic disease, and police violence. The series is a snapshot of a uniquely disruptive moment in American history.
Based on interviews with the mothers of Black women slain by police, she has co-authored a play entitled “Say Her Name: The Lives that Should Have Been.” The plot entangles the stories of six women, victims of police violence and their mothers, to weave a tapestry of intergenerational loss, grief, resistance, and rebirth.
Crenshaw is a leading voice in calling for a gender-inclusive approach to racial justice interventions, and alongside the #SayHerName campaign, has spearheaded the “Why We Can’t Wait” campaign and co-authored Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected and Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women.
Her groundbreaking work on “Intersectionality” has traveled globally and was influential in shaping the South African equality clause. She has held visiting professorships at the London School of Economics and the European Institute and was the Fulbright Chair in South America. Crenshaw authored the background paper on gender and race discrimination for the World Conference on Racism and has given talks on race and gender justice around the world.
Crenshaw received her J.D. from Harvard, L.L.M. from the University of Wisconsin, and B.A. from Cornell University. She sits on the boards of VDay and the Algorithmic Justice League.