Harvard Law School Celebrates Lani Guinier’s Tenth Anniversary

More than 80 guests gathered at Harvard Law School to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Lani Guinier’s appointment as the first black woman to be named to a tenured faculty position at the school. Guinier remains the only black woman on the Harvard Law School faculty.

Attending the event was Derrick Bell, who left Harvard in 1990 to protest the school’s refusal to appoint a woman of color to its faculty. Bell currently teaches at the New York University School of Law. Also celebrating the Guinier anniversary were Henry Louis Gates Jr., Anita Hill, Laurence Tribe, and Damon Keith, the federal judge from Detroit for whom Guinier clerked in 1974.

During the celebration it was announced that a portrait of the late Constance Baker Motley, civil rights attorney and federal judge, had been commissioned and would be displayed at the law school.

Copyright © 2008. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.