2024 PHRC / Temple Law Social Justice Lecture Series An Evening With Professor Melissa Murray

Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Time: 6:30 PM
Duane Morris LLP Moot Court Room
Klein Hall, 2^nd Floor
1719 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia PA 19122
Register Below

About the event

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and Temple Law School are proud to present Professor Melissa Murray, co-host of the Supreme Court podcast Strict Scrutiny, legal analyst for MSNBC, and leading expert on constitutional law, as the featured speaker for the 2024 PHRC / Temple Law Social Justice Lecture. The PHRC Social Justice Lecture Series examines the promise of the United States as a country that values equity. While reality has included a long history of oppression, this series examines the work that remains to ensure we create a society that neither diminishes nor marginalizes any of its residents.

register now

about Professor melissa murray

Melissa Murray

Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law, and Faculty Director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network

Melissa Murray knows the transformational power of women’s rights and gender justice. As a leading scholar of constitutional law and reproductive rights and justice, she researches and writes about the structures, systems, and institutions that allow women to thrive—as well as those that stymie and limit women’s ambitions for themselves and their families.

The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Melissa knows first-hand the importance of securing and expanding opportunities for women. She was just six years old when she realized that her literacy skills outstripped her grandmother’s. But even as Melissa recognized her grandmother’s limitations, she also saw her dogged determination to ensure that her daughters—and granddaughters—would have more opportunities. Raising chickens, selling eggs, and doing other home-based labor, Melissa’s grandmother made sure that all five of her daughters, including Melissa’s mother, completed high school and went on to have careers. With these powerful models of grit and determination, it is no wonder that Melissa went on to be one of the nation’s leading experts on women’s rights, reproductive rights and justice, and the United States Supreme Court.

Expand

The co-host of the popular Supreme Court podcast, Strict Scrutiny, and a legal analyst for MSNBC, Melissa’s talks explore the intersection of gender, race, and the law, and examines the role of legal institutions, including the Supreme Court, in entrenching and disrupting inequalities. An engaging and commanding speaker, Melissa challenges audiences to understand the ways in which gendered roles and expectations have long permeated—and continue to permeate—all aspects of our society, stymieing opportunities for gender justice, reproductive justice, and a more equal society.

Murray is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law, and Faculty Director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network. Previously, she was the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law and Interim Dean of Berkeley Law, the first Black woman to lead a top ten law school. Murray’s articles have appeared in leading law journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Columbia Law Review. Murray regularly appears in print and on television to comment on critical political and policy issues. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, where she was a member of the Yale Law Journal, and the University of Virginia, where she was a Jefferson Scholar and an Echols One Gateway Center, Suite 751 | Newton, MA 02458 | Phone: 617.614.1600 | Fax: 617.965.6610 | apbspeakers.com

Scholar. Prior to entering academia, she served as a law clerk to the Hon. Sonia Sotomayor and the Hon. Stefan R. Underhill.

Her moving talks make clear the real-life stakes of our most pressing legal and political issues—for women and everyone else.