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Haywood Burns, the Law
School's second Dean, was
an activist, attorney, and civil rights advocate who urged people to work to
help underserved communities. His passionate commitment to human rights led him
to engage in struggles against racism and economic and social injustice in the United States
and around the world. Burns' civil
rights career began at age 15, when he helped integrate the swimming pool in Peekskill, New
York. As a law student at Yale, he participated in
the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi.
He became Assistant Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and
later served as General Counsel to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's
Campaign. A founder of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, he was the first
African-American dean of a New York law school, leading the CUNY School of Law
to full American Bar Association accreditation.
After Burns died tragically in an automobile accident in South Africa in
1996, the Law School established a Chair in Civil Rights
in his memory. Funded by an endowment and a generous contribution from the New
York State Legislature, the Chair is a visiting position that has enabled a
succession of lawyers, scholars, and activists to bring their experiences,
wisdom, and perspectives to the classrooms of CUNY Law.
Haywood Burns Chairs (1997-Present)
Celina Romany (2010-11)
Dean Spade (2009-10)
Professor Dean Spade of Seattle University, a scholar and advocate on the intersections of race, gender and economic justice, was a Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School. He was named to give the 2009-2010 James A. Thomas Lecture at Yale.
Margaret Montoya (2008-09)
Since 1992, Professor Margaret Montoya has been a member of the faculty at the University of New Mexico Law School, where she examines issues of race, ethnicity, gender and language. During college at San Diego State University in the 1970s, she was a member of the student government and was involved in the Chicano, anti-war and women's movements. She became the first Hispanic woman accepted at Harvard Law School. After graduation, she received the Harvard University Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. Today, she also appears in a weekly television roundtable on a local PBS station discussing the local news in New Mexico.
2007-08
Professor Richard
Abel, Michael J. Connell Professor of Law at UCLA and faculty
coordinator for the public interest law program. Participated in the founding
of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies in 1977 and helped organize the
meeting on "Law and Racism: The Sounds of Silence."
2006-07
Professor Anthony Paul Farley of Boston College
Law School.
An expert on Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and Legal Theory, Farley
is also an affiliated professor with the Graduate Department of Sociology and
African & African Diaspora Studies at Boston College.
2005-06
Professor Paula Johnson of Syracuse University. Former co-president of the Society
of American Law Teachers (SALT), a national organization of nearly 800 law
professors, and widely known for her work to advance scholarship in the area of
race, gender and the law.
2004-05
Ida Castro, Commissioner of the New
Jersey State Department of Personnel and former Chair of the U.S. Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission.
2003-04
Professor Susan Jones, Clinical
Professor at George
Washington University
and expert on micro-enterprise and economic rights.
2002-03
Professor Camilo Perez Bustillo,
formerly of the Instituto Tecnologico y Estudios Superiores in Monterrey,
Mexico, founder of Multicultural, Education, Training, and Advocacy (META), and
scholar/activist on international issues of poverty and self-determination.
2001-02
Professor Eric Yamamoto of the
William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii,
civil rights scholar and litigator of cases on reparations for Asian Americans
interned during the Second World War.
2000-01
The Hon. Robert L. Carter, Judge of
the U.S. District Court, Southern District and the close working
associate of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall when both were part
of the famed NAACP legal team that won Brown v. Board of Education.
Judge Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South
Africa and former African National Congress leader in the struggle for
democracy in South Africa.
1999-00
William L. Robinson, former Dean of
the District of Columbia School of Law and former Executive Director of
the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
1998-99
Theodore M. Shaw, Associate
Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.
1997-98
The
Hon. Nathaniel R. Jones, Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit and former General Counsel of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
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