Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

Born: 1959

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: Black

Cornell University BA Government & African Studies 1981; Harvard University JD 1984; University of wisconsin-Madison LLM 1985

"She characterizes intersectionality a "a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigration status. What's often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just a sum of its parts." (Wikipedia); “Sometimes I’ve read things that say, ‘Intersectionality, blah, blah, blah,’ and then I’d wonder, ‘Oh, I wonder whose intersectionality that is,’ and then I’d see me cited, and I was like, ‘I’ve never written that. I’ve never said that. That is just not how I think about intersectionality. . .“What was puzzling is that usually with ideas that people take seriously, they actually try to master them, or at least try to read the sources that they are citing for the proposition. Often, that doesn’t happen with intersectionality, and there are any number of theories as to why that’s the case, but what many people have heard or know about intersectionality comes more from what people say than what they’ve actually encountered themselves.” ”(VOX.COM); when asked if she would accept a nomination to the Supreme court she stated, “I would do it, after I take my ice skates off, having skated across hell.” (theguardian.com); "

— Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

Field of Study: Civil Rights Activist; Legal Scholar

Institution/Corporation: UCLA; Columbia Law School

Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degree: KU Leuven (2020); Member: Quill & Dagger Senior Honors' Society, NSF's Committee to Research Violence Against Women, Domestic Strategy Group at Aspen Institute (1992-95), women's Media Initiative, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2021), Board of Sundance Institute, board of algorithmic Justic League

Awards: 1985 William H. Hastie Fellow; 1991 & 1994 Professor of the Year, UCLA School of Law; 2007 Fulbright Chair for Latin America in Brazil; 2008 in residence Fellowship at the Center of Advanced Behavioral Studies at Stanford; 2017 Toby Gittler Award, Brandeis University; 2008 Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship; 2015 No. 1 Most Inspiring Feminist, Ms Magazine; 2015 "Power 100" Ebony Magazine; 2016 Outstanding Scholar Award, Fellows of the American Bar Foundation (ABF); 2021 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Service Award, Association of American Law Schools (AALS); 2021 Triennial Award, AALS; Lucy Terry Price Unsung Heroine Award; Lifetime Achievement Award, Planned Parenthood; Lifetime Achievement Award, ERA Coalition; voted 1 of the 10 Most Important Thinkers in the World, Prospect Magazine; Senior Nonresident Fellow, Brookings Institute; 2023 Winslow Medal, Yale School of Public Health

Achievements: scholar of using critical race theory as a lens to further explore and examine the Tulsa race massacre; professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues; known for introducing and developing intersectional theory, the study of how overlapping or intersecting social identities, particularly minority identities, relate to systems and structures of oppression, domination, or discrimination; work includes intersectional feminism, which is a sub-category related to intersectional theory. Intersectional feminism examines the overlapping systems of oppression and discrimination that women face due to their ethnicity, sexuality, and economic background; is an advocate for the #SayHerName movement whose aim is to draw attention to Black women victims of police brutality & anti-Black violence in the US