Critical Race Studies in Education Association to honor Professor Frampton

The Critical Race Studies in Education Association will honor Professor Mary Louise Frampton, director of the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies, with its 2019 Derrick Bell Legacy Award.

Bell, a civil rights activist, Harvard Law School professor and University of Oregon School of Law dean, died in 2011. The Bell Legacy Award recognizes critical race theorists, critical race studies scholars, and progressive educators committed to advancing social justice and educational race equity.

Frampton will receive her award at the CRSEA annual meeting in late May at the University of Southern California.

“This award has particular significance for me because Derrick Bell, a Critical Race Theory giant, and I entered Harvard Law School at the same time, he as a lecturer and I as a student,” Frampton said. “I was one of his first students in Race, Racism, and the Law, and he became my lifelong mentor and friend. To receive an award in his memory is the highest honor I can imagine.”

Frampton joined UC Davis as director of the Aoki Center in 2017. Under her leadership, the center established the Water Justice Clinic, the Tribal Justice Project, and a partnership with North Carolina A & T University, the largest HBCU. Frampton teaches in the areas of restorative justice, structural inequality, law and social justice, legislative advocacy, and professional responsibility and her research focuses on restorative justice as a racial justice tool in schools, justice systems, and deeply divided communities.  For more than a decade, she led the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at Berkeley Law.

Dean Kevin R. Johnson and Professor Emerita Angela P. Harris are previous Bell Legacy Award honorees.