The arc (of history) still bends toward justice.
Lani Guinier was Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years, before joining Harvard Law School in 1998 as the school's first woman of color to be granted tenure.[21] She regularly lectured at various other law schools and universities including Yale, Stanford, New York University (NYU), UT Austin, Berkeley, UCLA, Rice, and University of Chicago. In 2007 she was a visiting professor at Columbia Law School, and in 2009 she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Lani Guinier (/ˈlɑːni ɡwɪˈnɪər/; April 19, 1950 – January 7, 2022) was an American civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there.[1] Guinier was a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years, before joining Harvard Law School in 1998. Guinier's work included professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action.
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Guinier was President Bill Clinton's nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in April 1993.[8][9] Conservative journalists, as well as Republican senators, mounted a campaign against Guinier's nomination. Guinier was dubbed a "quota queen", a phrase first used in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Clint Bolick, a Reagan-era Justice Department official.[10] The term was perceived by some to be racially loaded, combining the "welfare queen" stereotype with "quota," a buzzword used to challenge affirmative action.[11] In fact, Guinier was an opponent of racial quotas.[12]
Some journalists also alleged that Guinier's writings indicated that she supported the shaping of electoral districts to ensure a black majority, a process known as "race-conscious districting." One New York Times opinion piece claimed that Guinier was in favor of "segregating black voters in black-majority districts."[citation needed] Guinier was portrayed as a racial polarizer who believed—in the words of George Will—that "only blacks can represent blacks."
In the face of the negative media attention, many Democratic senators, including David Pryor of Arkansas, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois (the only African American serving in the Senate at that time)[13] informed Clinton that her interviews with senators were going poorly and urged him to withdraw Guinier's nomination.[14]
Clinton withdrew Guinier's nomination on June 4, 1993. He stated that Guinier's writings "clearly lend themselves to interpretations that do not represent the views I expressed on civil rights during the [presidential] campaign."[15] Guinier, for her part, acknowledged that her writings were often "unclear and subject to vastly different interpretations," but believed that the political attacks had distorted and caricatured her academic philosophies.[15] William T. Coleman Jr., who had served as Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford, wrote that the withdrawal was "a grave [loss], both for President Clinton and the country. The President's yanking of the nomination, caving in to shrill, unsubstantiated attacks, was not only unfair, but some would say political cowardice."[16]
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