ALI member Randall L. Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, will speak at the Presidential Forum on Diversity hosted by Union College on April 27. Professor Kennedy, a recognized expert on on race issues will present “The Racial Promised Land? Creating a Racially Just Social Order.”
Professor Kennedy earned his A.B. in history from Princeton and attended the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal. He served as a law clerk for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S Court of Appeals and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S Supreme Court. He was elected to The American Law Institute in 1995.
He is the author of numerous books, including “For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action and the Law,” “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency,” “Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal,” “Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption” and the controversial bestseller “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.” His book "Race, Crime and the Law" won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1998.
The Presidential Forum on Diversity was established in 2006 by Union College President Stephen C. Ainlay to bring in notable speakers on a wide range of topics that promote diversity and inclusiveness.