2026 Hope Lewis Distinguished Lecture Delivered by Cheryl I. Harris
03.28.26 — Northeastern Law’s Center for Law, Equity and Race (CLEAR) welcomed renowned legal scholar Cheryl I. Harris to campus on March 23 to deliver the 2026 Hope Lewis Distinguished Lecture. Titled “Meeting the Moment: 25 Years of Critical Race Studies,” Harris’ lecture reflected on the enduring relevance of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in American law and on the challenges facing the legal community in the current political environment.
The event drew students, faculty and guests for a program that included remarks by Dean James Hackney and an introduction by Professor Libby Adler, a former student, and then a colleague of Hope Lewis.
Harris holds the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at UCLA School of Law, where she has built a career spanning more than three decades at the forefront of civil rights legal theory. She is widely known for her landmark 1993 law review article “Whiteness as Property,” which fundamentally shaped how legal scholars understand the relationship between race, identity and property rights in American law. It is a work that remains a foundational text in university classrooms across the country. Her current scholarship includes leading an initiative responding to the ongoing political and legislative attacks on CRT, work for which she served as principal investigator on a major research grant. She is also engaged in revising the landmark textbook Race, Racism and American Law, originally authored by the late Derrick Bell.
Harris began her remarks with a tribute to Hope Lewis, whom she knew. Harris noted that Lewis’ distinctive contribution to CRT was her work connecting discourses in national and international law. Harris cited Lewis’ pathbreaking law review article, “Lionheart Gals Facing the Dragon: The Human Rights of Inter/National Black Women in the US,” which, she said, illuminated the relationship between critical race scholarship and feminist international human rights frameworks.
Further, Harris addressed the origins of CRT, suggesting that its central intervention was that race “shaped all domains of law” and concomitantly, that law played a crucial role in structuring how Americans experience race. She described how, with the authoritarian turn, CRT became a vector for anti-Black, anti-DEI political projects designed to re-institute white supremacy and she suggested interventions that legal actors could adopt to uphold historical truths and protect civil and human rights in an oppressive legal climate.
Harris' presence — and the body of work she brought with her — offered the Northeastern Law community both historical grounding and a forward-looking framework for resistance and renewal.
The Hope Lewis Distinguished Lectureship, sponsored by CLEAR, brings a nationally recognized scholar and advocate to Northeastern Law each year to speak on issues affecting communities impacted by racially discriminatory policies. The lecture honors the memory of Lewis, who taught at Northeastern Law from 1992 until her death in 2016. A visionary scholar and brilliant human rights advocate, Lewis dedicated her career to the intersections of race, disability, immigration and international law. She founded the law school’s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy and played a formative role in the development of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). She received many awards for her work, including honors from the American Bar Association and the Society of American Law Teachers. The lectureship is supported by bequests from Lewis and her mother, Blossom Stephenson, whose steadfast care and devotion made possible Lewis’ continued scholarship and professional life in the final years of her life.
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Photos by Michael Manning, michaelmanningphoto.com.
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