Derek Black Stepping into the Faculty Lounge

It's my great pleasure to announce that my friend Derek Black is stepping into the faculty lounge to sit with us for a spell.  Derek teaches at Howard Law School, where he is an associate professor and director of the Education Rights Center.  Derek graduated summa cum laude with a major in African and African American studies from the University of Tennessee before law school here in Chapel Hill, where he was an editor of the North Carolina Law Review.  His publications include Education Law: Equality, Fairness, and Reform (Aspen 2012) and such articles as "Middle Income Peers as Educational Resources and the Constitutional Right to Equal Access" forthcoming in the Boston College Law Review, "How the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Undermines Equal Protection and Congress’s Duty to Remedy It," in the Boston University Law Review in 2010, and "Unlocking the Power of State Constitutions with Equal Protection: The First Step Toward Education as a Federally Protected Right," in the William and Mary Law Review in 2010.  In addition to Howard, where he has taught since 2005, Derek visited with us last year -- where there were some mighty interesting lunch conversations with Gregg Polsky and me.  I'll let Gregg or Derek talk about those.

Cribbing now a little from his website: 

Professor Black was a staff attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. While there, he litigated, NAACP v. Thomasville School District, a case on behalf of African Americans who alleged that the school district had been racially segregating students into separate schools and classrooms and providing them unequal education ever since Brown v. Board of Education.  Professor Black was also involved in litigation to encourage school districts’ voluntary desegregation and diversity efforts, represented students in disciplinary hearings, worked in coalitions to change statewide disciplinary procedures, analyzed state educational systems under state constitutions to determine whether they are delivering an adequate education to minority students, and delivered numerous presentations on minority students’ access to quality education.  After joining the academy, he has continued to serve as pro bono counsel to the Lawyers' Committee on these and other matters.

Comments

[Dawinder S. Sidhu]

Looking forward to it -- welcome, Derek!