Still Having Her Say

More than a decade after becoming a household name, Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier holds true to her beliefs, principles.

By Ronald Roach

That Lani Guinier is one of the most publicly visible and outspoken scholars in the American academy should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed her career or read her books. The first and only African American woman to hold a tenured faculty position at the Harvard University law school, Guinier has put her visibility to use by speaking out on issues of race, gender and democratic decision-making and by urging honest public discussion on these issues.
In July 1998, Guinier joined the Harvard law school faculty. At Harvard, she teaches courses on professional responsibility for public lawyers, law and the political process, and critical perspectives on race, gender, class and social change. Interestingly, her Jamaican-born father, Ewart Guinier, had been the first chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard in 1969. The elder Guinier, who was a labor organizer and lawyer, had attended Harvard as an undergraduate in the early 1930s, but left disenchanted after experiencing considerable racial discrimination.
Prior to her Harvard law school appointment, Guinier had been a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school in Philadelphia, Pa. A civil rights attorney during the late 1970s and 1980s, Guinier had worked in the civil rights division in the U.S. Justice Department during the Carter administration and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where she headed the voting rights program.
In 1993, Guinier came to national prominence when President Bill Clinton nominated her to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department. After conservatives crusaded against the nomination over her views on proportional democratic representation and voter participation, the nomination was withdrawn without Guinier having the benefit of a hearing to defend her ideas.
Guinier is the author of The Tyranny of the Majority; Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice, and the co-author of The Miner's Canary: Rethinking Race and Power and Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law Schools and Institutional Change. In recent years, she and collaborators have launched Web sites, RaceTalks.org and Minerscanary.org, to promote public discussions on race and gender equity.
Black Issues spoke to Guinier at her law school office this past January.