2024–2025 Faculty Fellow Presentations
On June 3 and 13, 2024, the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) Faculty Fellows presented their projects before Northeastern University School of Law faculty, staff and students, gathered online and in the Moot Courtroom in Dockser Hall. The cohort for the 2023-24 academic term included Northeastern’s Philosophy Professor Adam Hosein, also the Director of the Politics, Philosophy, and Economics Program, and Affiliate Professor of Law; Stearns Trustee Professor of History and Global Studies Kris Manjapra; Associate Professor of Journalism and Africana Studies Caleb Gayle; and Professor of Law and International Affairs Zinaida Miller, who is also faculty co-director for the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy.
Their presentations explored several important and pressing topics in the fields of restorative and transitional justice, public history and philosophy.
“The work of our Faculty Fellows continues to make important contributions to many of the challenging issues related to race, equity, and social justice. This year’s work has extended to the international arena and underscores the importance of exploring potential solutions outside of the traditional US legal framework,” said Dr. Deborah A. Jackson, CLEAR managing director. “We look forward to more opportunities to engage other faculty members in this work.”
On June 3, Hosein started proceedings by pondering the pivotal question “What counts as racial discrimination?” In his community presentation, Hosein considered a new definition of racial discrimination that simultaneously recognizes the role of broad social and structural inequality, and respects ideals of individualism. He argued that his “Exclusion Approach” would explain the role of oppression in a theory of discrimination, while also respecting commitments to moral individualism. His theory, he said, would permit affirmative action.
“Affirmative Action doesn’t channel any negative ideology,” said Hosein. “There’s no pervasive anti-white ideology … It can’t just be that it says you’re denied because of your race, it has to say that you’re understood to be less equal in society, and I don’t think white people are pervasively perceived of less equal in society.”
Manjapra delivered his community presentation next, titled Dead Reckoning: Black Ancestors and the Museum Complex, in which he showcased the Ancestral Entities Project. Working with historian and graduate student Kehinde Benson Ilegbusi (CSSH ’26) they have collated almost 80 collections of ancestral entities currently owned by or on display in Western museums. Manjapra also discussed the #FindingCeremony movement, acts of “Black commemoration,” he said, like those led by activist Abdul Ally Muhammad in Philadelphia, to have ancestral remains returned to and reburied by the communities they once called home.
“All of this points to the entwined history of racial science, colonial conquest and law, and what I term necro-speculation,” said Manjapra, “or the making of super-profits through the ongoing theft and exploitation of dead Black and Indigenous people.”
Watch the June 3 Presentations
On June 13, Miller presented her project titled Haunting Justice: Racing and De-Racing Through Transitional Justice. She discussed the nature and origins of transitional justice, before moving on to discuss the contemporary challenges this mode of justice must overcome to remain relevant. These include accountability and historical redress, the problems associated with truth commissions and testimony, as well as the ongoing debate over reparations and responsibility.
Speaking on the future of transitional justice as an approach, Miller said “there are still questions live in the field, and it has enough ongoing power, that I think the question of whether [transitional justice] is useful to push the boundaries, is still ongoing.”
Gayle rounded off the Faculty Fellows’ series, with his presentation of research conducted, with CLEAR’s support, for his latest book Black Moses, which explores the genesis of the Black exodus during the last few years of Reconstruction, Black indigeneity, and the creation of the Old West. Gayle’s work also reveals how this history has impacted Black citizenship and land ownership, the ramifications of which are still felt by Black communities across the American West today.
During this presentation, titled Black Utopia Building and Memory as Salvation, Gayle asserted that Black Moses is “very unconcerned in appealing to the rules of journalism.” Gayle’s writing has been published in many titles, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Atlantic. He described his work here as “actively not objective,” and his role as an oral historian.
He detailed his experiences recording the histories of Black farmers, cowboys and Indigenous communities, and spoke to the challenges of preserving this history.
“We need to engage more in helping people identify that the stories that they have, even the aspirational part of their stories that never came true, are just as important,” he said.
Watch the June 3 Presentations
About the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR)
Worldwide, recent attention on the role of law and legal systems in creating and perpetuating seemingly intractable racial inequalities and disparities provide an opportunity to create real change. At Northeastern Law, the Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) brings together our pioneering programs and faculty — long engaged in theoretical and translational research, innovative pedagogy and collaborations with external communities — to address today’s challenges and provide tomorrow’s solutions for the nation’s most complex social challenges. As one of the law school’s five Centers of Excellence, CLEAR offers an interdisciplinary convening space for faculty and students across the university who want to have an impact on these issues.
Two dynamic programs are at the core of the CLEAR’s work: the nationally recognized Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), led by Professor Margaret Burnham, and the highly regarded Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF), led by Professor Deborah Ramirez. These projects have a common goal—building from historical memory and working to address the racial injuries of the past through the use of law, teaching, techniques of restorative justice and community partnerships. Both share a methodological focus on law as it intersects with history and other disciplines, resulting in deeply interdisciplinary investigations of race, law and justice.
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Left to right: Evan Darryl Walton, Rachel Rosenbloom, Lily Song and Dr. Deborah Jackson On July 17 and 18, CLEAR Faculty Fellows for the 2022-23 academic term presented their projects before Northeastern University School of Law faculty, staff and students, gathered online and in the Moot Courtroom in Dockser Hall.
The Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) expanded the Racial Justice Faculty Fellows concept, initiated by Dean James Hackney in 2021, to support a diverse cohort of new and emerging scholars at the law school.
The faculty fellows’ projects covered several issues of importance to Black, Latinx and Asian communities such as access to housing; barriers to small business development; empowering parents in child welfare encounters; and strategies to address gentrification displacement.
Additionally, there was research in the theoretical arena exploring the historic impact of race and arguments on birthright citizenship; and arguments to support an affirmative duty by the federal government to further fair housing in communities.
“We believe the work of our Faculty Fellows will be important contributions to the understanding and expansion of opportunities needed to bring about meaningful change for our communities,” said Dr. Deborah A. Jackson, CLEAR managing director. “We will continue to look for more opportunities to engage other faculty members in this work.”
The presentations started with E. Darryl Walton, associate clinical professor and director of the Community Business Clinic, who brings a seasoned practice career to the Clinic. During his practice, he encountered barriers to business growth in the form of direct and indirect costs that disproportionately impact new entrants in commercial spaces, including his BIPOC business clients. Drawing on his experiences as a practitioner, Walton’s project, titled “Small Businesses and Startups Still Stymied by Substantial LLC Registration and Maintenance Fees” examined the effects of costs associated with starting a new business in the state of Massachusetts, compared to surrounding jurisdictions. Walton focuses largely on LLC registration fees, maintenance fee structures, and incentives for economic business zones.
Rachel Rosenbloom, CLEAR immigration justice fellow and professor at Northeastern Law, delivered her project, “Race, Borders, and Birthright Citizenship.” Her presentation showcased the ideas at the heart of her latest book, Citizenship for Some: White Nationalism and the Long Roots of the Movement to Restrict Constitutional Birthright Citizenship. Tracing the origins of the contemporary movement to limit birthright citizenship, Rosenbloom’s work examines the numerous efforts of anti-immigrant activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to restrict the scope of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment through litigation and proposed constitutional amendments. It also explores the more hidden, bureaucratic life of the Citizenship Clause.Professor Rosenbloom argues that despite the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship without regard to race, birthright citizenship’s racialized origins have shown a persistent tendency to resurface in the context of immigration enforcement efforts. Whether targeting Chinese Americans during the Chinese Exclusion era, Mexican Americans in the 1930s, or in recent decades, a broad spectrum of Black and brown Americans have been swept up by a racialized mass deportation system that has become increasingly intertwined with a racialized system of mass incarceration.
Lily Song, assistant professor of Race and Social Justice in the Built Environment, at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design, shared her work “The ARTery: Re-imagining and Re-formulating Spatial Planning and Development with Local Communities in Roxbury.”Professor Song is an urban planner and activist-scholar who studies long-term community engagement practices. Her research focuses on the relations between urban infrastructure and redevelopment initiatives, socio-spatial inequality, and race, class and gender politics in American cities and other decolonizing contexts.
During her fellowship year, Professor Song partnered with Boston public officials to design cultural interventions that target the gentrification trends and displacement pressures in Roxbury. The ARTery project seeks to use public art to amplify cultural identity, economic opportunity and social cohesion among neighborhood residents. Professor Song works with community-based artists, activists and small business owners to generate public art.
Day two of presentations began with Rebecca Chapman and her discussion of the vacuum in rights protection for families exposed to New York City’s child protective services system.
Chapman, CLEAR criminal justice fellow, is also a social justice teaching fellow at the Legal Services in Social Context Program. Alongside social justice organizations, public defender groups in New York, and her students at Northeastern Law, Chapman’s project, “Keeping Families Together: Miranda Rights for Parents in the Predatory Family Policing System,” proposes a framework that supports the efforts of The Bronx Defenders, a New York public defender organization. Chapman’s work seeks to promote state legislation that would promote the right of families to be informed of their legal rights at their first point of contact with workers from the child protection system. Her work hopes to reduce the amount of time that families are separated during child protection investigations.
Melvin J. Kelley IV, an associate professor of law and business at Northeastern University School of Law and D’Amore McKim School of Business, presented next. His project, titled “Beyond the Perpetrator’s Perspective on Golden Ghettos: Reinterpreting Fair Housing Through the Lens of Transitional Justice” focused on the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Professor Kelley’s research examines whether approaches from the human rights field of transitional justice might assist in the interpretation and implementation of the provision of “affirmatively furthering fair housing.” During his fellowship, he met with scholars in a range of disciplines who are exploring how to remediate enduring legacies of historical race-based oppression, to assist in the evaluation of prospects for redressing contemporary inequities in real property ownership and regional maldistributions of resources across racialized spaces.
Rounding off two days of inspiring and thought-provoking presentations, Ana M. Rivera, an associate clinical professor and director of the Housing Rights Clinic at Northeastern Law, gave her illuminating presentation, "The Disparate Impact of Unconscionable Lease Provisions in the Era of post-Covid.”Professor Rivera is the founder and director of Northeastern Law’s Housing Rights Advocacy Clinic. Through individual representation, the new clinic addresses legal issues faced by low-income communities. In her experience as a practicing housing rights lawyer, Rivera litigated cases involving residential leasing practices that disparately affected BIPOC and tenants from poor communities. These practices prevailed in the COVID era and exacerbated exponentially the pressures on renters and recipients of benefits such as ERAP (Emergency Rental Assistance Program) and Section 8 support. During her fellowship year, Rivera examined how these initiatives harmfully impact low-income renters and explored potential reforms to address this issue.