LAW Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences | BU Today

As a freshman law student in 1994, Angela Onwuachi-Willig felt so alienated and alone that she wondered if there was a place for her in the legal world. Then it was introduced into Critical Race Theory (CRT) – a school of thought that states that racism, both individualized and structural, is not a deviation. It is embedded in our everyday life. The term CRT was coined by civil rights attorney and scientist Kimberlé Crenshaw. The CRT fellows and voices Onwuachi-Willig read and heard while studying law helped her envision a space for herself in the field and lay the foundations for her academic work.

That spring, Onwuachi-Willig, Dean of the School of Law at Boston University, and Ryan Roth Gallo and Ernest J. Gallo Professor of Law – the nation’s first endowed chair in critical racial theory – were elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS.) ) along with 251 others. Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia University and UCLA, was among those others – as was Oprah Winfrey, another heroine of Onwuachi-Willig.

“Kimberlé Crenshaw transformed many disciplines in science,” said Onwuachi-Willig, a renowned civil rights, family, and labor discrimination law scholar who received her doctorate in African American studies and sociology from the University of Michigan in addition to her law degrees from Yale the USA shortlisted. “I’m surprised [Crenshaw] was not recorded years ago. It’s an incredible honor to be in your class. And Oprah Winfrey – talk about honor! I remember seeing her as a kid. She made me want to be a talk show host. Seeing Oprah Winfrey taught me to dream. “

Onwuachi-Willig says that she is stunned about her own election to the academy. “It’s a wonderful honor. When I saw the email I couldn’t believe it. I was just overjoyed. “

Onwuachi-Willig is “one of the country’s foremost legal scholars,” said Jean Morrison, BU professor and chief academic officer, describing the LAW dean’s election to AAAS as “well-deserved recognition of the groundbreaking work she continues to do our national conversation on issues of civil rights equality, workplace discrimination, gender and family law. ”The honor, adds Morrison,“ also reflects the level of respect ”. [Onwuachi-Willig] earned from her colleagues. ”

Onwuachi-Willig is one of more than 20 BU faculty members to be elected to AAAS, a group that includes President Robert A. Brown; Michael Hasselmo, Ha Jin (GRS’93), Virginia Sapiro, Nancy Kopell and former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky, all professors at the College of Arts & Sciences; and Dana Robert, professor in the School of Theology.

In its press release, the Academy calls the election of the new class “an opportunity to recognize exceptional people who help solve the world’s most pressing challenges, create meaning through art, and contribute to the common good from all areas, disciplines and professions. ”

When I saw the email I couldn’t believe it. I was just overjoyed.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig

The AAAS was founded by the country’s founders in 1780 to guide the young nation in overcoming myriad obstacles and challenges. Among the academicians: Alexander Hamilton (elected 1791), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Albert Einstein (1924), Margaret Mead (1948), Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59) (1966), Anthony Fauci (Hon. ’18) (1991), US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (2003), and Bryan Stevenson (2014), public interest lawyer and founder of the Equal Rights Justice Initiative.

“Although the founders did not expect a historic pandemic, overdue race settlements and political unrest for a year,” says the academy’s statement, “the purpose of electing new members is more compelling than ever.”

Onwuachi-Willig wrote openly in May 2020 about her fear as a black woman and mother of three black children about the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer from Minneapolis – and the long list of police officers murders of others unarmed blacks. Fired by their shared pain and outrage over Floyd’s death, Onwuachi-Willig and four other deans of Black Women Law embarked on an extensive effort to involve law schools across the country in the fight for racial justice. In October 2020, the Association of American Law Schools honored Onwuachi-Willig and the four other deans with their first Impact Award.

Traditionally, the academy asks new members to write a formal confirmation of admission. Onwuachi-Willig shared a draft of their letter with BU Today. She writes of her “enormous pride and gratitude” for accepting the honor, which “became all the more significant because of its timing”. She has “cried over the deadly effects of COVID-19 on people around the world and denounced the deeply disproportionate and harmful effects of the pandemic on blacks and browns in the United States,” while remaining grateful that her family ” remains virus-free and “a job where I was able to protect myself.

“I also found myself often, sometimes by a thread, with tragedy after tragedy highlighting the reality of two different Americas for whites and blacks in our nation,” she continues. Then she ticks off a list: Floyd’s murder, failure to charge any of the officers with the March 2020 murder of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, and the fatal April shooting of Daunte Wright by a Minnesota police officer that occurred during the chauvin process.

The academy’s email invitation reached Onwuachi-Willig’s inbox on April 22, two days after a Minneapolis jury convicted Chauvin on all three of Floyd’s murder charges. The LAW Dean writes in her letter of the roller coaster ride of emotions she had experienced this week – “deep fear that Chauvin’s trial would follow the pattern of others and end with his acquittal; brief relief and partial [a] Moment of hope “after the guilty verdict; “Immediate discomfort and concern that my fellow white citizens might revert to their former complacency when experts commented on the judgment in disturbing ways.”

Then “the total dejection when I woke up the next morning to learn that 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant had been shot dead by Columbus, Ohio police officer Nicholas Reardon.

“In short,” writes Onwuachi-Willig, “I have lived the research I have just done and done for the past few years – research on the cultural trauma that blacks experience as a group in connection with police murders. ” Cases.

“It seems both silly and selfish to say,” writes the dean of LAW, but the academy’s email invitation “brought me great joy and comfort.

“At a time when Critical Racial Theory, an area of ​​study that was the focus of my scholarship, was the subject of organized attacks by journalists, politicians, everyday citizens and, at one point, the President of our nation, the Academy’s invitation to me in my eyes was an important response to this resistance, ”writes Onwuachi-Willig. “Likewise, at a moment when I and so many other blacks wanted to hear from institutions like our courts and government agencies that our lives matter – that blacks’ lives matter – the academy’s choice of academy caught my eye Academy reminds that my work and my voice is important. “

Other members of the AAAS 2021 class include biotechnology leader Tony Coles, neurosurgeon and medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, civil rights activist and scientist Angela Davis, New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, Nathan Hecht, chairman of the Supreme Court von Texas, Yale economist Dirk Bergemann, NPR journalist Maria Hinojosa, playwright and actress Suzan-Lori Parks, and atmospheric researcher Anne Thompson.

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