Professor Khiara M. Bridges Named Inaugural Associate Dean for Equity, Justice & Engagement
The new position is responsible for developing initiatives that will address areas of need identified in the school’s 2017 Campus Climate Survey.
Khiara M. Bridges, professor of law at BU’s School of Law and professor of anthropology with the College of Arts & Sciences, has been named the inaugural associate dean for equity, justice & engagement at BU Law. She is responsible for developing and implementing initiatives and programs that will provide faculty and staff with education and training that will assist them in offering effective educations to all of their students.
The new position was created by Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig to address some of the areas of need identified in the 2017 Campus Climate Survey, which assess students’ experience of the School of Law as an open, inclusive, and dynamic learning community. It is BU Law’s mission to be a leader in the teaching and study of law and its related disciplines. As such, the school is committed to fostering a community where all students feel respected, valued, and empowered to attain the highest levels of academic success.
In addition, Associate Dean Bridges will strategize with Dean Onwuachi-Willig, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Stacey Dogan, and Associate Dean for Experiential Education Peggy Maisel, about the recruitment of faculty, and with Associate Dean for Finance & Administration Elizabeth Cerrato on the recruitment of staff, from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups and other underrepresented groups. She will also develop strategies around how best to support such faculty to ensure their success in tenure and promotion and foster a greater sense of belonging within the BU Law community.
“I believe that Professor Bridges is an excellent pick for this position,” says Dean Onwuachi-Willig. “She has thought extensively about race, class, and gender in her scholarship—which has been published in the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the California Law Review, among many other journals. She is also the author of two books that explore issues around race, class and gender. Her third book, Critical Race Theory: A Primer, will be published next year with Foundation Press.”
Bridges’s books, Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (University of California Press 2011) and The Poverty of Privacy Rights (Stanford University Press 2017) offer notable contributions to the study of the state’s interactions with poor mothers seeking support in their pregnancies and beyond. She also sits on the Academic Advisory Council of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, and she is a coeditor of a reproductive justice book series that is published under the imprint of the University of California Press.
“I’m excited to put some of the ideas that I’ve explored in my scholarship into practice in this new role,” Bridges says.
Related News
- Motherhood, Poverty, and the Right to Privacy
- POV: Defending Affirmative Action
- Scott Hirst Joins BU Law Faculty as Associate Professor
- BU Law Welcomes Portia Pedro as an Associate Professor
- POV: Stop Blaming the Poor for Their Poverty