Dorothy E. Roberts is the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. She is also Director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. An internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, she has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming thinking on reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics.

Professor Roberts is the author of the award-winning books Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Random House/Pantheon, 1997) and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books/Civitas, 2002), as well as co-editor of 6 books on constitutional law and gender. She has also published more than 90 articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review. Her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, was published by the New Press in July 2011. Among her many public interest positions, Roberts is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Black Women’s Health Imperative.

University of Pennsylvania Law School – Dorothy E. Roberts Profile

Articles related to the conference:

Dorothy Roberts – Collateral Consequences Genetic Surveillance
Dorothy Roberts – Prison, Foster Care, & the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers
Dorothy Roberts – Privatization & Punishment in the New Age of Reprogenetics
Dorothy Roberts – Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color Equality & the Right of Privacy
Dorothy Roberts – The Racial Geography of Child Welfare
Dorothy Roberts – The Social & Moral Costs of Mass Incarceration in African American Communities