The United States is in the midst of a national conversation about race and inequality unlike any seen in a generation.

Law, as it did in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, will play a central role in addressing the racial disparities and inequality that threaten our democracy and system of justice in the 21st century.

Fordham’s Center on Race, Law and Justice will engage domestic and global issues of race, law, and equity that will help identify, analyze, and create new solutions to the key civil rights challenges of our time.

The center will

• examine the role of law in structuring racial inequality and disadvantage in the domestic and global contexts
• intervene in current debates about race, citizenship, and democracy
• promote critical, interdisciplinary, and methodologically innovative scholarship and approaches to understanding race and discrimination
• generate insights and solutions necessary to achieve real and positive change on race issues
• inform legal pedagogy and praxis concerning matters of race, diversity, and opportunity in legal institutions and programs
• collaborate with law firms and other legal institutions to address issues of diversity and access in the legal profession

Law schools have an important role to play in the burgeoning new movement for civil rights. With its Center on Race, Law and Justice, Fordham will be positioned front and center.