Levin College of Law
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Center for the Study of Race & Race Relations

The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations (CSRRR) is an academic research and resource center. The Center’s mission is met through the work of various groups engaged in a wide range of activities.

Welcome to the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations.

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Dr. Katheryn Russell-Brown
Director

About the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations

In 1996, UF Law Professor Sharon Rush had a big idea. It was time, she thought, for UF’s law school to establish a center on race. She shared her ideas with her colleague, Professor Kenneth Nunn. He agreed. Together they began to envision and plan, drawing in colleagues who were also interested in the intersections of race and law. The idea for a Race Center was quickly supported and developed with the help of a small and dedicated group. In addition to Professors Nunn and Rush, the group included Professors Michelle Jacobs, Pedro Malavet, Juan Perea (now at Loyola‐Chicago), Charles Pouncey (FIU), Phyliss Craig‐Taylor (Dean, NCCU). Rahim Reed, Assistant Dean for Minority Affairs, was also a member of this group. His efforts were critical to the establishment of the UF Race Center. Their goal was to etch out a strategy for making race central to legal studies at UF. Energetic and dedicated, this working group lobbied the law school’s administration to create a race center. These efforts led to a formal proposal and a two-year long wait. In spring 1998, the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations (CSRRR) was officially established as a university-wide center.

Now, more than 20 years later, the UF Race Center continues to thrive. With its mission of fostering communities of dialogue through empirical and intellectual discourse, it engages in a wide array of activities. The CSRRR hosts symposia and workshops, engages in research, produces scholarship, offers course development grants, and administers fellowships. In keeping with its original vision, the UF Race Center works across the university community with students, faculty, and other campus centers to broaden interdisciplinary efforts and connections to race.

The UF Race Center’s efforts are buoyed by a solid foundation of affiliate professors. In fact, UF Law has one of the largest contingents of affiliate professors at any law school in the country. Of the approximately 200 law schools in the United States, less than 25 have centers that focus on race. The CSRRR was the first one established and is the only one with a focus on race and race relations and race-related curriculum development.

CSRRR work includes:

  • Producing, supporting, and highlighting race-related scholarship within and beyond the UFcommunity
  • Gathering, analyzing, and sharing historical and contemporary knowledge about race and race relations
  • Developing and supporting, through teaching, research, writing, and workshops, race-related curricula for collegiate and professional schools
  • Fostering non-stigmatizing ways of discussing issues of race and ethnicity

Please join us in our efforts to identify and address the many difficult but important race-related issues. We look forward to working with you. We welcome your questions and comments at csrrr@law.ufl.edu.

Staff

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Dr. Katheryn Russell-Brown

Director

Dr. Russell-Brown was named the CSRRR director in 2003. She is also the Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law. Her research and writing focus on race and crime. The second edition of her book, The Color of Crime (NYU Press) was published in 2009.
russellbrownk@law.ufl.edu

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Dr. Diedre F. Houchen

Post-Doctoral Associate

Dr. Houchen became the CSRRR Postdoctoral Associate in 2016. She has taught race and education, history of education, and teacher education courses in University of Florida’s College of Education. Her research and writing focuses on race, education and history. Her work as a youth advocate, program developer, middle and high school teacher and teacher educator deepened her understanding of the challenges facing public education.She is published in the areas of urban education, teaching, and learning. Her current work considers Black teacher activism and pedagogy during Jim Crow.
diedre@ufl.edu

Students

CSRRR supports students through various initiatives and opportunities. The CSRRR Law Student Diversity Council is a forum for race and ethnicity-based law student associations to engage in collaborations and propel the work of their various associations forward.

Advisory Council

Associate Directors

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Stephanie Bornstein

Professor Stephanie Bornstein teaches and writes in the areas of antidiscrimination law, employment and labor law, and civil procedure. Her scholarship focuses on legal and administrative strategies to reduce racial and gender inequality in the workplace and ensure access to justice in civil litigation. Bornstein’s work has been cited in enforcement efforts by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). From 2019-2020, Bornstein served as the Chair of the AALS Section on Employment Discrimination Law. For its 10th edition, forthcoming in 2021, she will join as co-author of a leading casebook in the field, Sullivan & Zimmer’s CASES & MATERIALS ON EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION (Aspen).

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Nancy Dowd

Professor Nancy Dowd’s scholarship focuses on children and families, race and gender equality, critical race and feminist theory, juvenile justice, fatherhood, and non-marital families. Her list of recent books and publications is on the UF website. Her most recent book, Reimagining Equality: A New Deal for Children of Color (2018) is an indepth examination of the life course of African American boys from birth to age 18, as a means to explore race and gender inequalities among children. In that work she has developed the concept of developmental equality, a means to achieve equality for those children at the bottom of the hierarchies among children with respect to support and development to insure equal opportunity as adults. Her current project is a collaboration with Dr. Margaret Beale Spencer, a renowned developmental scientist, to re-read Brown v. Board of Education, a project they call “Radical Brown.”

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Berta E. Hernandez-Truyol

Professor Berta E. Hernández-Truyol is the Levin Mabie & Levin Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Center on Children and Families. She is an internationally renowned human rights scholar who teaches international law, human rights, trade and globalization. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections of sex, race, gender, sexuality, culture, and other traits that render some populations marginable. In a recent book project, she utilized a critical human rights paradigm to unveil injustice and to seek to provide methodological tools to remedy inequality and eradicate prejudice in the global community – both in the U.S. and internationally.

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Darren Hutchinson

Professor Darren Hutchinson is the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Eminent Scholar Chair and Professor of Law. He teaches and writes about constitutional law, civil rights litigation, law and social movements, LGBT rights, and critical race theory. He has written extensively on the Supreme Court’s equal protection doctrine. His research addresses legal questions from an interdisciplinary perspective, utilizing social science materials to analyze the law with greater complexity.

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Michelle Jacobs

Professor Michelle Jacobs is a full Professor of Law. She teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, White Collar Crime, Critical Race Theory, International Criminal Law, and a seminar, Criminal Law in the Virtual Context, which examines how technological development creates intersections between traditional civil law and criminal law. Her scholarship interests include access to justice for poor and under served communities, race and the criminal justice system including issues of violent policing in Black communities; women defendants in the criminal justice system with a special interest in incarcerated women survivors of intimate partner violence.

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Maryam Jamshidi

Professor Jamshidi teaches and writes in the areas of national security, public international law, the law of foreign relations, and tort law. Her scholarship examines how private law shapes and is transformed by public laws touching on national security and international law matters, as well as the relationship between national security laws and accountability. In exploring these dynamics, Professor Jamshidi’s work draws on political and critical theory, as well as sociology. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the University of Colorado Law Review. She also regularly publishes in popular media outlets. Her most recent scholarship examines how legalized discrimination in national security law impacts political efforts at Executive accountability.

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Shani King

Professor Shani King is an active scholar who writes and teaches in the areas of international human rights, children’s rights and family law; the role of children’s counsel in various contexts; family autonomy in traditionally underserved populations; immigration law and legal ethics.  Professor King’s scholarship focuses on urgent contemporary issues involving juvenile justice, dependency, immigration and international and domestic children’s rights, especially as they impact the lives of African-American and Latino children.

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Pedro A. Malavet

Professor Pedro A. Malavet has published multiple law review articles and one book on the constitutional relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico and uses Critical Race Theory to illustrate the racialization of Latinas/os generally in the U.S. and specifically on how that affects the citizenship rights of the largest group of U.S. territorial citizens: Puerto Ricans. These writings illuminate how Latinas/os are homogenized into a single non-white, non-citizen “race” in both the popular imagination and in American legal and political discourse. These tropes and the accompanying discrimination make it difficult for Latinas and Latinos to fully exercise our citizenship and even fundamental human rights in the U.S.

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Gail Mathapo

Professor Gail Mathapo is the Faculty Services Librarian and Professor of Legal Research at the Levin College of Law’s Legal Information Center. In addition to her traditional librarian duties, she also teaches Legal Research and Advanced Legal Research courses. Her particular areas of interest include pedagogy and outreach services.

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Jason Nance

Jason P. Nance is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. He teaches Education Law, Remedies, Torts, and Introduction to the Legal Profession. He focuses his research and writing on racial inequalities in the public education system, school discipline, implicit racial bias, the school-to-prison pipeline, students’ rights, and the legal profession. His scholarship has been published in numerous journals, cited by several courts, party and amicus briefs, law journals, books, treatises, and education and other social science journals, and featured in numerous national media outlets. Professor Nance served as the reporter for the American Bar Association’s Joint Task Force on Reversing the School-to-Prison Pipeline, where he co-authored a report and proposed resolutions for the ABA to adopt to help dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline nationwide.

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Kenneth B. Nunn

Professor Kenneth B. Nunn is Co-founder of CSRRR, Assistant Director of the Criminal Justice Center, Associate Director of the Center on Children and Families and Professor of Law. He teaches criminal law and procedure. His research interests include African and African-centered thought, cultural studies, legal semiotics, and Critical Race Theory. In his research he employs a number of critical theories to explore the intersection of race and criminal justice. He was a consulting editor for the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Race and Racism and a contributor to the World Book Encyclopedia on race, racism and related topics.

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Elizabeth Rowe

Professor Elizabeth Rowe is an internationally recognized expert on Trade Secret Law. She is a prolific scholar who has co-authored or contributed to several books on intellectual property and has authored numerous law review articles in leading journals. Much of her research addresses the intersection of trade secrets with employment law and/or technology, as well as the interplay between intellectual property, government policy, and innovation. She has co-authored several books on trade secrets, including the first and the leading casebook in the United States devoted exclusively to Trade Secret Law, as well as a Nutshell treatise on trade secrets. As a leading national scholar on trade secrecy, Professor Rowe has been recognized by the University of Florida Research Foundation for her “outstanding research and scholarly achievements.” She is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Get Involved

Fill out the below form to subscribe to CSRRR emails and let us know what topics you are interested in discussing.

Publications

Children with Incarcerated Parents

Drawing for cover of Children with Incarcerated Parents Program

Trayvon Martin Projects

trayvon martin event
Two Trayvon Martin events were held in February 2014. One was on Wednesday, February 5 and the other on Thursday, February 13 from 6:00 p.m. til 8:00 p.m. at UF Law, Room 180.

Race and Race-Related Scholarship

Newsletter

Fall 2020 E-Newsletter

Winter 2019 E-Newsletter

2019-2020 E-Newsletter

CSRRR Digital Collections and Projects

Visit the UF Law African American Digital History project. Hear the voices of UF Law Black Alumni. Listen to their stories. Learn an essential part of UF history.

Books and Publications on Race, Law School, and Lawyering

CSRRR compiled this resource to assist with incorporating the topic of race in law school curricula. Please view the resource here.
CSRRR Book List Banner

Want to participate in a CSRRR discussion virtually? Please see the CSRRR’s digital home.  Here we archive our materials, discussions and activities.

Internships, Fellowships, and Grants

Student Funding Opportunities

Yegelwel Fellowship

Summer 2020 Fellowship Award—$4,000 stipend

The University of Florida’s Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations (CSRRR) is pleased to announce the 2020 Evan Yegelwel Summer Fellowship. The Fellowship award permits one UF Law student to participate in a Summer Fellowship Program at the Anti-Defamation League, Florida Regional Office in Boca Raton.

A generous gift from UF Law alumnus Evan Yegelwel, who graduated in 1980, has made this Fellowship possible. Mr. Yegelwel is a partner in the Jacksonville, Florida law firm of Terrell Hogan Ellis Yegelwel, P.A.

Find out more about the Yegelwel Fellowship.

Course Development Grants

The Course Development Grant is intended to fund the development and teaching of a course substantially addressing issues of race and/or race relations.

Past Faculty Funding Opportunities

Course Development Grants

The Course Development Grants funded the development and teaching of undergraduate and graduate courses substantially devoted to addressing issues of race and/or race relations.

CSRRR News and Events

Professor Russell-Brown Participates in Mayor Poe’s Book Club on Oct. 18

UF Law Professor Katheryn Russell-Brown will participate in Mayor Poe’s Book Club panel discussion on Sunday, October 18, 2020. Join the discussion on Zoom via tinyurl.com/mayorbookclub.  

Law Firms in a Post-George Floyd World: Same Challenge, Different Day

The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, at the University of Florida Levin College of Law hosted the webinar, Law Firms in a Post-George Floyd World: Same Challenge, Different Day on Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 12:00pm. The panel discussion was moderated by UF Law Professor Elizabeth Rowe. She was joined by […]

Should Colleges Mandate a Course on Race / Anti-Racism?

The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations (CSRRR) at the University of Florida Levin College of Law hosted a webinar with a panel of UF faculty where they discussed the benefit and costs of creating a university-wide required course on race, on Thursday, June 25, 2020 at 12:00pm, via Zoom. To learn […]

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Contact Us

Contact Information

Address

Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations
University of Florida, Levin College of Law
P.O. Box 117625
Gainesville, FL 32611-7625

Email

csrrr@law.ufl.edu

Phone

(352) 273-0614

Fax

(352) 392-5000

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-0804
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