University of Utah

Williams is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia
University School of Law. A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard
Law School, she has served on faculties of the University of Wisconsin
School of Law, Harvard University's Women's Studies Program, and the
City University of New York Law School at Queen's College. As a law
professor, she has testified before congress, acted as a consultant and
coordinator for a variety of public interest lawsuits, and served as a
past member of the boards of the Center for Constitutional Rights, of
the Society of American Law Teachers, and of the Nation Organization
for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund. She is the recipient of
the Alumnae Achievement Award from Wellesley, the Graduate Society
Medal from Harvard, and the MacArthur foundation “genius” grant.

Before entering academia, she practiced law, as a consumer
advocate and Deputy City Attorney for the City of Los Angeles, and as a
staff attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

With an appreciation and support for multiculturalism and civil
rights, she sits on several boards, including that of Wellesley College
and the Andy Warhol Foundation. She has authored numerous articles for
scholarly journals and popular magazines and newspapers including USA Today, Harvard Law Review, Tikkun, the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and the Village Voice. Her book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, was named one of the twenty-five best books of 1991 by the Voice Literary Supplement and one of the "feminist classics of the last twenty years" that "literally changed women's lives," by Ms. magazine's Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Her newest book is titled Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and a Search for a Room of My Own – personal collection of stories, essays, anecdotes, and biography.

She has appeared on a variety of radio and television shows and
has been a keynote speaker at numerous conferences. She has served as a
guest commentator for a number of radio stations; and has served as a
program consultant to Channel 13 and to Wisconsin Public Radio. She has
also served as a consultant and coordinator for a variety of public
interest lawsuits. She has appeared in a number of documentary films,
including That Rush! which she wrote and narrated. Directed by
British filmmaker Isaac Julian, this short study of American talk show
hosts was featured as part of an installation at the Institute of
Contemporary Art in London.

“Racism is an enormously subtle perceptual matter. Understanding
its conventions involves figuring out how to insinuate one’s way
through all sorts of well-guarded hierarchies...Finding a door in is a
trick of social vision as much as it is of legal remedy or political
recourse.”

- Patricia J. Williams