Professor Maillard, who holds a Ph.D from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, is an Assistant Professor of Law at Syracuse University.  His research merges legal history, trusts and estates, and family law, with a specific focus on mixed race. He has written and presented on interracial will disputes and membership issues in American Indian tribes. He is currently working on a book on the denial of mixed race in America, as evidenced in law, literature, and culture.

Dr. Peterson is an Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University.  He has been a visiting lecturer and preceptor in African American Studies at Princeton University and was the founding Media Coordinator for the Harvard University Hip Hop Archive.  Collaborating with Cornel West, he delivered the “Hip Hop Studies” lectures at Princeton University in 2005.  He has published several articles on hip-hop, African-American culture, and linguistics.  He is currently working on a book on the life of Tupac Shakur, which will be forthcoming in Praeger/Greenwood Press.  Dr. Peterson has also appeared on ABC News, Fox News, the Michael Eric Dyson Show, The Michael Baisden Show, and the award-winning PBS documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Dr. Peterson, finally, is the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC, an association of Hip Hop generational scholars dedicated to researching and  developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop culture.

In response to the flood of automated spam postings, trolls, and the general need to improve the management of our comment pages, BlackProf has instituted a new authentication procedure for persons interested in posting comments.

Under this new system, you must first create a user account and “sign in” before you will be allowed to post a comment on BlackProf.  Instructions on how to create an account and/or sign in to post a comment are located at the bottom of each page of comments.  Both processes are relatively straight-forward, and should be familiar to many of you (especially those of you who already have Type Key accounts).  Once you have created an account, you will only need to “sign in” to post a comment.

The authentication procedure applies only to those persons who wish to post comments.  You do not need to create an account or “sign in” in order to view posts or comments. 

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Bernadette Atuahene , a graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.  Professor Atuahene has varied experiences in the field of law and international development.  She has worked as a legal consultant for the World Bank and as a human rights investigator for the Center for Economic and Social Rights, where she received Amnesty International’s Patrick Stewart Human Rights Award for her work with human rights organizations throughout South America.  Professor Atuahene studied in South Africa as a Fulbright Scholar, and served as a judicial clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, working for Justices Madala and Ngcobo.  Professor Atuahene's current scholarlship focuses on issues concerning the confiscation and restitution of property.

Dr. Khalilah Brown-Dean , who holds a Ph.D. from Ohio State University, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and African-American Studies at Yale University.  Professor Brown-Dean is a Faculty Affiliate of the Ohio Criminal Justice Research Center and previously served as a Fellow of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute.  She has published several pieces on issues including as felon disenfranchisement, racial profiling, and bias in the American criminal justice system. In 2005, she received the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Research and was selected to present her work on felon disenfranchisement to the Oxford University Roundtable.  She teaches courses on Voting Rights and Representation, Race and Ethnicity in American Politics, Public Opinion, and Black and Jewish Community Politics. She is a recipient of the Henry R. Spencer Award for Distinguished Teaching and has been recognized by the American Political Science Association and Pi Sigma Alpha for excellence in teaching.

Charlton Copeland is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami Law School.  Professor Copeland holds a master's degree in Religion from Yale Divinity School, and a law degree from Yale Law School.  Like Professor Atuahene, he also served as a law clerk on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, clerking for Justices Richard J. Goldstone and Catherine O’Regan.  Prior to joining the faculty at Miami, Professor Copeland was a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law.  Professor Copeland’s research interests include administrative law, federal courts and federalism, comparative constitutional law, and race and the law.

Professors Atuahene, Brown-Dean, and Copeland, welcome to Blackprof!

Blackprof is one of the more open-ended intellectual forums on the web — particularly as it relates to blogs hosted by academics — and that liberality reflects our desire to facilitate a broad, robust, and intellectually unpredictable set of conversations that might enlighten us all.  But we do reserve the right to edit comments or delete them entirely if they are devoid of substantive significance and amount to nothing more than offensive name-calling.  We do not exercise this authority lightly, as our general view is the best way to meet distasteful speech is either with silence or more speech.  But, nonetheless, sometimes comments cross the line and require censorship for the broader good of the group.  For these few extreme comments, we might not become aware of them as fast as some of you might like — we do have full-time jobs, you know — but we will do our best to ensure our forum is as free as possible from the kind of personal, ad hominem attacks designed to assault identities rather than ideas.  And, ultimately, the best means of achieving this goal is if each one of us accords to our fellow members the civility and respect we would appreciate for ourselves.

It remains the case that most of our comments are smart, thoughtful, and consistent with the kind of intellectual community we hope to facilitate.  But we still have too many idiots in our midst, and we are working on ways of using technology to identify and eliminate these nuts quicker.  We also reserve the right not only to censor individual comments, but also to ban individuals entirely for repeated or uniquely egregious breaches of our civility norms.  I'd recommend, too, that to the extent inappropriate comments fall through the cracks, that folks simply ignore them in the same way you might if a fool approached you on the street and started shouting inanities.  Sometimes folks dignify things that, at minimum, should be ignored.  In any case, we are working harder to be more effective in encouraging greater respect and civility in our comment boards, and we will announce these new methods as we roll them out.  And of course please let us know if you have ideas that might support this effort.

Michele Alexandre , a graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Law School, is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphries School of Law. Her teaching interests include property, trusts and estates, and feminist legal theory. Professor Alexandre's prior professional experience includes serving as a civil rights attorney with Chestnut Sanders Sanders Pettaway Campbell & Albright L.L.C. in Selma, AL; as an Associate in the Corporate Real Estate Department of the Debevoise & Plimpton law firm; and as a Law Clerk for the Hon. John P. Fullam, U.S. Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania. Professor Alexandre has received Fulbright and Watson Fellowships to pursue her research projects. Her publications include “Dance Halls, Masquerades, Body Protest and The Law: The Female Body as a Redemptive Tool against Trinidad's Gender-Biased Laws,” 13 Duke J. of Gender L.& Pol'y 177 (2006) and “Maximizing on Interest Convergence and Redefining Kelo v. City of London's Public Purpose: Can Katrina Serve as a Catalyst for Change?” (forthcoming in the UCLA Chicano/a-Latino/a Law Review)

Dr. Kyra Gaunt , who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. SUNY-Binghamton, is an "ethno-musicologist" and an Associate Professor of Music at Baruch College in New York City. She holds appointments with the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, as well as the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Formerly on the faculties of New York University and the University of Virginia, she is the country's first tenure-track music professor to specialize in teaching and studying hip-hop. Her work focuses on the impact of race and gender in shaping the social and cultural meanings of contemporary African-American music. She's published widely. Her book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (NYU Press) was released in January 2006. She's also written chapters in several books, including Generations of Youth (1998), Language, Rhythm and Sound (1997), and Feminism, Multiculturalism and the Media (1995). She's also published in numerous journals, including Musical Quarterly and AAA's City & Society.

Professor Harris-Lacewell is an Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University. She received her B.A. in English from Wake Forest University, her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University, and an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School. She is pursuing additional graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York.  Professor Harris-Lacewell is the author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton 2004), which explores how African Americans develop political ideas through ordinary conversations in places like barbershops, churches, and popular culture. Barbershops was awarded the 2005 W.E.B. DuBois book award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and the 2005 Best Book Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.  Her work has been widely published in both academic and general-public vehicles, and she frequently appears on television and radio, providing expert commentary for NBC, Fox, Showtime, and National Public Radio, among other outlets.  Professor Harris-Lacewell, finally, is at work on a new book, For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn't Enough, which examines the connections between shame, sadness, and strength in African American women's politics.

Professor Onwuachi-Willig is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law.  She graduated from Grinnell College, where she majored in American Studies and was elected Phi Beta Kappa.   She received her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, where she received numerous awards and served as a Note Editor of the Michigan Law Review.  After law school, Professor Onwuachi-Willig clerked for the Honorable Solomon Oliver, Jr., United States District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio, and the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore, United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.   She also practiced law as a litigation and employment attorney at Jones Day in Cleveland, Ohio, and as an employment attorney with Foley Hoag LLP in Boston, Massachusetts.  Professor Onwuachi-Willig joined the faculty at Iowa in 2006 after three years as a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.  Her research and teaching interests include family law, employment discrimination, critical race theory, feminist legal theory, and evidence.  Her recent work has appeared in the Michigan Law Review, California Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and Iowa Law Review. In 2006, the Minority Groups Section of the Association of American Law Schools honored Professor Onwuachi-Willig for her work by giving her the Derrick A. Bell award, which is given to a junior faculty member who has made an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system, or social justice.

Professors Harris-Lacewell and Onwuachi-Willing, welcome to Blackprof!  

But as we passionately share and debate with one another our diverse intellectual views, we must remind ourselves that no meaningful substantive conversation can be had in the absence of civility.  The large majority of comments uphold this standard, but a small yet meaningful number have recently crossed the line from substantive conversation to ad hominem attack.  This not only demeans the individual commentor — the ad hominem, after all, is the last resort of the defeated partisan — but it also demeans the overall quality of our discourse, which hurts the entire Blackprof community.

Blackprof is one of the more open-ended intellectual forums on the web — particularly as it relates to blogs hosted by academics — and that liberality reflects our desire to facilitate a broad, robust, and intellectually unpredictable set of conversations that might enlighten us all.  But we do reserve the right to edit comments or delete them entirely if they are devoid of substantive significance and amount to nothing more than offensive name-calling.  We do not exercise this authority lightly, as our general view is the best way to meet distasteful speech is either with silence or more speech.  But, nonetheless, sometimes comments cross the line and require censorship for the broader good of the group.  For these few extreme comments, we might not become aware of them as fast as some of you might like — we do have full-time jobs, you know — but we will do our best to ensure our forum is as free as possible from the kind of personal, ad hominem attacks designed to assault identities rather than ideas.  And, ultimately, the best means of acheiving this goal is if each one of us accords to our fellow members the civility and respect we would appreciate for ourselves.

We also welcome for the month of January, Rachel Godsil, a law professor at Seton Hall University School of Law.  Professor Godsil is one of the academy's leading thinkers on environmental racism and the intersection of race and property.  Her writings in law-review articles include: Race-Nuisance: The Politics of Law in the Jim Crow Era, 105 Mich. L. Rev. (forthcoming); Viewing the Cathedral from Behind the Color Line: Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Environmental Racism, 54 Emory L. J. 1808 (2004); Environmental Justice and the Integration Ideal, 59 NY L. J. 1109 (2004); Expressivism, Empathy and Equality, 336 U. Mich. J.L. Ref. 247 (2003); and one of the most widely cited student notes ever written, Remedying Environmental Racism, 90 Mich. L. Rev. 394 (1991).  Professor Godsil also co-edited with Denise Morgan and Joy Moses the book Awakening from the Dream: Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal Justice (Carolina Academic Press 2005).  Prior to entering academia, Professor Godsil worked as an Associate Counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. 

We thank Professor Godsil for her time and look forward to her contributions.

First, you may have noticed that you may now subscribe to BlackProf.  Enter your email address, and you will receive “real time” notice of all postings.  It’s a great way to stay connected to the BlackProf community. 

Second, readers are now able to retrieve all posts by a single contributor.  Simply “click” on the name of the contributor in the left-hand column or the “more posts” button in the  byline of a post to pull up a list of links for all previous posts by that person.  This feature works for Guest, Regular, and Emeriti Contributors. 

Finally, community members can now experience YouTube embedded video here at BlackProf.  Over the past month, a handful of contributors have made streaming video available to our readers in connection with text posting, and we hope to expand these multimedia offerings while continuing to provide academic insight and analysis into prevailing issues of race, culture and society. 

Look for more innovation and change in BlackProf in the coming months.  And as always, if you have comments or suggestions, feel free to comment on this thread or contact the weblog administrators directly by clicking on the link in the upper left-hand corner. 

Thanks again for your enthusiasm, intellectual engagement, and humor.

Robin Lenhardt is a law professor at Fordham University School of Law.  Among other publications, she wrote Understanding the Mark: Race, Stigma, and Equality in Context, 78 N.Y.U. Law Rev. 803 (2004), a seminal article on the jurisprudential implications of racial stigma.  Prior to joining Fordham, Professor Lenhardt served as a Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and a Fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center.  Before entering academia, Professor Lenhardt served as Counsel to the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering — where, among other matters, she represented the University of Michigan in the Grutter and Gratz affirmative-action cases — and a Staff Attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law.  Professor Lenhardt, a Trustee of Brown University, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former Law Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

Michael Pinard is a law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. He teaches the Reentry of Ex-offenders Clinic, Criminal Procedure, and a course on the legal profession.  Professor Pinard’s scholarship and research interests focus on the criminal process, criminal-defense lawyering, and interconnections between the reentry of individuals with criminal records and the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. His most recent articles include An Integrated Perspective of the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions and the Reentry of Formerly Incarcerated Individuals, 86 B.U. L. REV. 623 (2006), and The Logistical and Ethical Difficulties of Informing Juveniles about the Collateral Consequences of Adjudications, NEVADA L.J.(2006) (forthcoming).  Professor Pinard serves on the American Association of Law Schools’ Standing Committee on Clinical Legal Education, the editorial board of the Clinical Law Review, and the board of the Clinical Legal Education Association.  Prior to coming to Maryland, Professor Pinard taught at St. John’s and Washington University in St. Louis, as well as at Yale Law School as a Robert M. Cover Clinical Teaching Fellow.  Before entering academia, Professor Pinard, a graduate of N.Y.U. Law School, served as a staff attorney with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City.

We thank Professors Lenhardt and Pinard for joining us for October.  We very much appreciate their time and look forward to their insights.

“An open thread is a post on a blog or frequently updated website where readers may comment and discuss any topic that they choose.” 

--Wikipedia 

This is Blackprof.com’s first Open Thread.  I look forward to hearing what’s on your mind. 

The technical problems have been resolved, and the comment feature is now fully operational.  Thank you for your patience.  Now, let’s get back to blogging!