Kim Crenshaw

Civil & Women's Rights Activist

Kim Crenshaw

Civil & Women's Rights Activist

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Biography

Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Co-founder and Executive Director of AAPF and Faculty Director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS) is a pioneering scholar and writer on civil rights, critical race theory, Black feminist legal theory, race, racism, and the law. She is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the Promise Institute Chair on Human Rights at UCLA Law School.

Crenshaw is a widely cited scholar whose writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Review, the National Black Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, and the Southern California Law Review. Crenshaw’s groundbreaking work on Intersectionality was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. She was the special rapporteur for the Expert Meeting on Gender and Race Discrimination and coordinated NGO efforts to ensure the inclusion of gender in the World Conference in Racism’s Conference Declaration.

Crenshaw is a co-editor of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement and assisted on the legal team representing Anita Hill at the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Crenshaw is also the author of Say Her Name, Black Women’s Stories of State Violence and Public Silence, and co-author of Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected. Crenshaw is a sought after speaker who conducts workshops and trainings on intersectionality and structural racism around the world. Crenshaw has facilitated workshops for human rights activists in Brazil and India and for constitutional court judges in South Africa and elsewhere.

Crenshaw received AALS Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education from the Association of American Law Schools, the 2021 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award by the Women's Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and Lifetime Achievement Aways from Planned Parenthood, the ERA Coalition, and was voted one of the ten most important thinkers in the world by Prospect Magazine. She also received the 2023 Winslow Medal from the Yale School of Public Health, has been named the 2023 W.E.B Du Bois Medalist at Harvard University, and was the recipient of the New Press Social Justice Award. Crenshaw’s Intersectionality Matters! ranks among the top 5 percent of podcasts, and her internet series “Under the Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that Covid Laid Bare,” received a WEBBIE recognition. She is a frequent contributor on MSNBC and NPR. She currently sits on the boards of Sundance Institute and the Algorithmic Justice League.

Speaker Videos

Highlight Reel

The Urgency of Intersectionality

Speech Topics

Intersectionality 101: Race & Gender in Work, Life & Politics:

“Intersectionalilty,” a term coined by speaker Kimberlé Crenshaw, calls attention to the multiple forces that create and sustain power and privilege in American society—and contribute to the discrimination and oppression of minority groups. One-dimensional approaches to social justice advocacy continue to divide key constituencies into distant and sometimes competing interests. Nowhere is this division more clearly visible than in discourses surrounding racial and gender bias in the workplace, where one-dimensional approaches often render the experiences of women of color unintelligible.

A leading authority in the area of civil rights, black feminist legal theory, race, racism, and the law, Crenshaw shares her groundbreaking work on "intersectionality" in this fascinating keynote, explaining how our inability to view oppression in society in terms of interrelated categories instead of separate ones—for example, separating gender from racial inequality, instead of merging the two—results in greater oppression for those who stand at the intersection of these categories—such as black women.

SayHerName

The Anatomy of Neo-Racism: How to Think About Racial Injustice in the Age of Trump

Thieves in the Night: How We Lost Our Civil Liberties Under the Threat

The Matrix: Just Science Fiction? Think Again!

Testimonials

"Absolutely and without a doubt, Kimberle is in our top five best speakers to ever come to campus. We had over 550 people in the audience, with a telecast to our downtown campus with about 200 people at that location. She was so kind, generous with her time, shared their incredible wisdom and knowledge and, most importantly, offered everyone hope for what is next. During this very difficult time in our country, and on college campuses across the nation, we needed to hear Kim’s inspirational words to keep us all moving forward in our collective work towards equality and justice. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

- Grand Valley State University