25 Facts About Lani Guinier

Carol Lani Guinier was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist.

Lani Guinier was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there.

Lani Guinier's scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Lani Guinier to be United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, but withdrew the nomination.

Carol Lani Guinier was born on April 19,1950, in New York City, to Eugenia "Genii" Paprin and Ewart Guinier.

Lani Guinier was forced to drop out in 1931, unable to afford school after he was excluded from financial aid and campus housing, but he ultimately returned to Harvard as a professor and the first chair of the Afro-American Studies Department in 1969.

Lani Guinier's parents met in Hawaii Territory, where each was a member of the Communist Party of Hawaii and of the Hawaii Civil Rights Congress.

Lani Guinier's father was a national officer for the United Public Workers of America, a Congress of Industrial Organizations union.

Lani Guinier's uncle was real estate developer and social activist Maurice Paprin.

Lani Guinier moved with her family to Hollis, Queens, in 1956.

Lani Guinier said that she wanted to be a civil rights lawyer since she was twelve years old, after she watched on television as Constance Baker Motley helped escort James Meredith, the first black American to enroll in the University of Mississippi.

Lani Guinier clerked for Judge Damon Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, then served as special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Drew S Days in the Civil Rights Division during the Carter Administration.

Lani Guinier was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1981, and after Ronald Reagan took office, she joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as an assistant counsel, eventually becoming head of its Voting Rights project.

Lani Guinier was a highly successful litigator for LDF, winning 31 of the 32 cases she argued.

Lani Guinier worked on the successful extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982.

Lani Guinier was President Bill Clinton's nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in April 1993.

Lani Guinier was dubbed a "quota queen," a phrase first used in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Clint Bolick, a Reagan-era US Justice Department official.

From 2001 until her death, Lani Guinier was active in civil rights in higher education, coining the term "confirmative action" to reconceptualize issues of diversity, fairness, and affirmative action.

Lani Guinier began her career in academics in 1989 as a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Lani Guinier spent 10 years at University of Pennsylvania Law School before joining Harvard Law School in 1998 as the school's first woman of color to be granted tenure.

Lani Guinier regularly lectured at various other law schools and universities including Yale, Stanford, New York University, UT Austin, Berkeley, UCLA, Rice, and University of Chicago.

Lani Guinier authored over two dozen law review articles, as well as five books:.

Lani Guinier died from complications of Alzheimer's disease at a care facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 7,2022, at the age of 71.

Lani Guinier was awarded the 1994 Harvey Levin Teaching Award at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the 2002 Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence from Harvard Law School.

Lani Guinier received eleven honorary degrees, from schools including Hunter College, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Smith College, Spelman College, Swarthmore College, and Bard College.