Center for the Study of Race & Race Relations

Dr. Katheryn Russell-Brown

Director

Dr. Russell-Brown was named the CSRRR director in 2003. She is also the Chesterfield Smith 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

Diedre F. Houchen

Post-Doctoral Associate

Diedre F. 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

Katheryn Russell-Brown

Professor Katheryn Russell-Brown is the Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law.  Professor Russell-Brown teaches, researches, and writes at the intersections of race, crime, and the sociology of law.  She has published numerous books, articles, and essays, including The Color of Crime.  In 2009, she was awarded a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship.  Her project focused on ways to integrate criminal justice issues into the elementary education curriculum.  Her article, “The Constitutionality of Jury Override in Alabama Death Penalty Cases,” was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Harris v. Alabama (1995).

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 current project 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.

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.

Diedre F. Houchen

Diedre F. Houchen became the CSRRR Postdoctoral Associate in 2016. Her research and writing focus on race, education, and history. Her current work considers Black educational pedagogy during de jure segregation. She is published in the areas of urban education, teaching, and learning.

Darren Hutchinson

Professor Darren Hutchinson is the Stephen C. O’Connell 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. He is working on an article, Undignified: The Supreme Court, Racial Justice, and Dignity Claims, which will be the focus of a symposium in the spring that will be published by the Florida Law Review.

Michelle Jacobs

Professor Michelle Jacobs is Assistant Director for the Criminal Justice Center and Professor of Law. Jacobs teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, international criminal law, critical race theory 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 criminal law, critical race theory and women defendants in the criminal justice system.

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.

Pedro A. Malavet

Professor Pedro A. Malavet has published multiple law review articles and one book in Critical Race Theory scholarship focusing on the racialization of Latinas/os generally in the United States 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.

Jason Nance

Professor Jason P. Nance is Associate Director of the Center on Children and Families and Associate Professor of Law. He teaches education law, torts and remedies. In his scholarship he examines the interface of law, policy, education, and race, drawing on his public school teacher experience, legal background and doctoral training in education policy and empirical research methodology. He’s focused on racial inequalities in the public education system, particularly school discipline, school-to-prison pipeline, addressing the ill effects of educators’ implicit racial biases, and the disparate use of strict security measures on students of color.

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.

Sharon E. Rush

Professor Sharon E. Rush is Co-founder of CSRRR, the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and the Irving Cypen Professor of Law. She teaches courses on constitutional law and federal courts. Her research focuses on the role law should play in helping society develop equal race relations. Her scholarship explores this in the context of public schools because they are becoming more and more segregated and unequal. Her current project focuses on intergroup contact theory and suggests it offers ways to reduce prejudice and promote equal race relations in schools.