Patricia J. Williams

Columnist

Patricia J. Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University, was born in Boston in 1951 and holds a BA from Wellesley College and a JD from Harvard Law School.

She was a fellow in the School of Criticism and Theory at Dartmouth College and has been an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School Law School and its department of women's studies. Williams also worked as a consumer advocate in the office of the City Attorney in Los Angeles.

A member of the State Bar of California and the Federal Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Williams has served on the advisory council for the Medgar Evers Center for Law and Social Justice of the City University of New York and on the board of governors for the Society of American Law Teachers, among others.

Her publications include Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave, On Being the Object of Property, The Electronic Transformation of Law and And We Are Not Married: A Journal of Musings on Legal Language and the Ideology of Style. In 1993, Harvard University Press published Williams's The Alchemy of Race & Rights to widespread critical acclaim. She is also author of The Rooster's Egg (Harvard, 1995), Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (Reith Lectures, 1997) (Noonday Press, 1998) and, most recently, Open House: On Family Food, Friends, Piano Lessons and The Search for a Room of My Own (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2004.)

Currently

  • Nobel Peace Sparks War

    October 21, 2009 Subscribe

    It's peculiar, the vocabulary that makes a liability out of the Nobel Prize.

  • Voice of America?

    September 23, 2009

    When does a society tip from expressive speech into excessive fulmination and then into repression or violence?

  • Reverse Nazism and the War on Universal Healthcare

    August 26, 2009

    What's at stake could very well be nothing less than America's own Weimar moment.

  • Mirror Man

    July 1, 2009

    Michael Jackson's fame and fortune ensured he had few barriers to the pursuit of whatever Mad Hatter fancy seized him--including his made-to-order kids.

  • The Talking Helix

    June 23, 2009

    DNA research increasingly allows us to collapse time and discover criminal guilt or innocence. That's why the Supreme Court's recent ruling against a prisoner's right to post-conviction DNA testing is so baffling.

  • Boxing Days

    May 6, 2009

    Elena Kagan has the intellect, toughness and fair-mindedness to make a great Supreme Court justice.

  • Mrs. Obama Meets Mrs. Windsor

    April 8, 2009

    Michelle Obama defies the boxes in which women have been caged, expanding the force field of feminism in ecumenical and unsettling ways.

  • Science and Supposition

    March 11, 2009

    The new Obama protocols on scientific research will influence not just stem cells but climate change, genetics, sex education and food safety.

  • Eight Is Enough

    February 11, 2009

    With the birth of Nadya Suleman's octuplets, we confront the virtues of motherhood, the ethics of fertility clinics and the myths we still concoct about childless women's worth.

  • Drowning Our Sorrows, Lifting a Glass

    January 15, 2009

    A sobering toast to the dubious achievements of the worst president in American history.

2008

  • American Dreams

    December 10, 2008

    If the American Dream is a form of worship, we need new totems to fit new and troubled times.

  • Uncooperative Housing

    November 13, 2008 Subscribe

    As our spanking-new era of optimism dawns, ask yourself, How integrated is your neighborhood?

  • Predatory Scapegoating

    October 16, 2008

    The real scandal of the year is that Eliot Spitzer, brought low by his own bad behavior, had predatory lenders in his sights.

  • Lipstick Jungle

    September 17, 2008 Subscribe

    Andy Warhol would have loved Sarah Palin. She really is the ultimate soup can.

  • Sarah Palin's Frontier Justice

    September 3, 2008

    Her appeal to a certain sector of the electorate lies in her willingness to take the law in her own hands--and use public power as a personal weapon.

  • Have Pantsuit, Will Travel

    August 27, 2008

    Hillary's signature attire is one phase in women's power-dressing; Michelle's sheath is another. But the shoes....

  • Tested, Tried, Untrue

    August 13, 2008

    Critiques of Obama's suitability for the presidency are bookended by astonishingly contradictory stereotypes.

  • Movin' On Down

    June 26, 2008 Subscribe

    Loan-sharking has resurged with global force, cutting across class, race and regions: we're all in the ghetto now.

  • Character Assassinations

    May 29, 2008 Subscribe

    Why does the fraudulence of the Republican machine remain so widely known and so persistently ignored?

  • Let Them Eat Waffles

    May 1, 2008 Subscribe

    How can Barack Obama--or any candidate--overcome the sad hypocrisy of our public discourse?

  • Where Credit Is Due

    April 3, 2008

    To view education as a profit-making business is to attack the lifelong love of learning.

  • House of Cards

    March 6, 2008

    It would be truly tragic if John McCain strolls into the White House while we argue over who has it worse, black men or white women.

  • Movin' On Up

    February 7, 2008

    Now that we've crested the mountaintop, let's have some politically incorrect dreams.

  • American Pie

    January 10, 2008

    Don't let the media or the right-wing spinmeisters reduce our first-ever serious black and female presidential candidates to stereotypes.

2007

  • The Audacity of Oprah

    December 6, 2007

    The combined power of Oprah & Obama could reinvigorate our embattled political landscape.

  • Judicial Activism in a Time of No Irony

    November 8, 2007 Subscribe

    Contemplating Mukasey, Musharraf and the imprisoned lawyers of Pakistan: how easily a modern liberal democracy can slide into a totalitarian state.

  • False Prophets

    November 1, 2007

    James Watson continues his long and well-documented history of baselessly biologizing social stereotypes.

  • Strange Culture

    October 11, 2007 Subscribe

    If the stuff of life is corporatized, does art about it become a form of interference in business?

  • Strange Culture

    October 5, 2007

    Federal authorities are prosecuting Steve Kurtz under the Patriot Act for using harmless bacteria in his artwork. A new film examines his ordeal.

  • Playing With Numbers

    September 13, 2007 Subscribe

    The Bush Administration's Civil Rights Commission would like us to believe that affirmative action harms black students by placing them in situations where they can't keep up.

  • The Protect Alberto Gonzales Act of 2007

    August 9, 2007

    Congress bows to Bush and passes a law that allows blanket data-mining of all phone calls or e-mail by anyone, anywhere.

  • Mourning in America

    July 12, 2007

    As the Supreme Court rules public schools cannot take voluntary action to overcome racial inequality, what's surprising is the lack of outcry.

  • Divining Demeanor

    June 7, 2007 Subscribe

    The latest Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty will give prosecutors huge latitude to pick jurors who enthusiastically embrace capital punishment.

  • Invisible America

    May 10, 2007

    Fifty-three years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court will rule on two cases that will decide the future of school integration.

  • Colorstruck

    April 5, 2007 Subscribe

    A "wrongful birth" suit by the parents of a dark-skinned baby conceived in vitro raises disturbing questions about the perception of race.

  • Judge Not?

    March 12, 2007 Subscribe

    The case of a severely disabled 9-year-old girl whose parents subjected her to a series of nonessential surgeries raises troubling questions about medical ethics and public policy.

  • L'Étranger

    February 22, 2007

    The media have fashioned an impossible portrait of Barack Obama: an American cleansed of the baggage of racism and slavery.

  • Zero and Infinity

    January 11, 2007 Subscribe

    Americans have become so sedated, obsessed and afraid, we are numb to the murders committed in our name.

2006

  • America to Me

    December 8, 2006 Subscribe

    What, exactly, does America look like to people like Michael Richards, Mel Gibson and Richard Viguerie?

  • Keeping Up Appearances

    November 9, 2006 Subscribe

    What are we to make of those who would equate Muslim women who wear the veil with the threat of terrorism?

  • Warlords of the First Amendment

    October 12, 2006 Subscribe

    A right-wing radio host on the vanguard of the English Only movement provides a platform for religious crazies to keep them from ruining the funeral of murdered Amish girls.

  • A Klatch of Civilizations

    September 14, 2006 Subscribe

    As Survivor races to the bottom by dividing this season's contenders into race-based tribes, perhaps we can look to Starbucks for new models of how to blend in.

  • The Hydra of Jim Crow

    August 10, 2006 Subscribe

    Teaching children to speak across boundaries is the essence of what integration is all about. It carries all the urgency of global peace.

  • The 600 Faces of Eve

    July 13, 2006 Subscribe

    The digital environs of Facebook and MySpace are ruled by assortive principles and the misplaced faith that an actuarial table is any kind of community--beloved, political or otherwise.

  • Borrowed Bodies

    June 8, 2006 Subscribe

    In a New York courtroom, a jury must decide whether a hip-hop-loving young white man who beat a young black man with a baseball bat is guilty of assault or a hate crime.

  • Felonious Intent

    May 25, 2006 Subscribe

    The prosecution of an 8-year-old in New York for wrongful homicide in a school bus accident invokes the "wild child" hysteria of the Central Park jogger case.

  • Yumi, Yumi, Yumi

    May 11, 2006 Subscribe

    Why is it that We the People are so obsessed with whether singing our national anthem in Spanish is an affront to our union?

  • Letters

    May 4, 2006 Subscribe

  • The Deciderator

    April 27, 2006

    Bush's goofily unmoored positioning of himself as "the decider" duncifies us all.

  • A Short History of the Pads of Brillo

    April 13, 2006 Subscribe

    Martians visiting planet Earth are mystified by the racist ruckus over Representative Cynthia McKinney's hair.

  • Jeu de Vivre

    March 31, 2006 Subscribe

    The real world is becoming more like a computer game every day. I worry that the computer itself is breeding little cyberhumans who will wander among us, sucking the humanity out of our ears.

  • Truth or Consequences

    March 16, 2006

    OK, kids: With conservatives on the hunt for dangerous left-wing academics, take this SAT (Save America from Treachery) test. See if you can tell the difference between a terrorist and a truth-teller. First prize: A three-day getaway in Baghdad. Fail and go to jail.

  • Perfect Knowledge, Perfect Ignorance

    March 2, 2006

    The Dubai flap is no surprise, considering Bush always promised to run America like a corporation--even if the corporation is Enron.

  • Emotional Truth

    February 16, 2006

    In a DNA-driven search for biological roots, it behooves us to be less romantic about connecting with our ancestors. If we biologize our history, we will be forever less than we could be.

  • All the King's Horses...

    February 2, 2006 Subscribe

    Worry about the CIA's new Open Source Center, which aims to piece together all sorts of unclassified information to create a broad picture of where trouble is likely to arise.

  • Foggy Bottom

    January 19, 2006 Subscribe

    If we are suspending the law in deference to Bush's unchecked impulses, let's call it by its proper name: Benign lawlessness? Gitmo Governance? Fear Factor?

  • Pandora's Box

    January 5, 2006 Subscribe

    A deep planetary insecurity has fostered a rush to build boundaries around ourselves--psychic green zones--no matter how irrational, separating white from black or brown, Christian from Muslim, European from Arab.

2005

  • Killing the Messenger

    December 1, 2005 Subscribe

    It's one thing for our State Department to plant phony stories in the media or jam broadcasts in Cuba. It's quite another for conservative policy analyst Frank Gaffney bolster's George Bush's grudge against Al Jazeera by arguing that it was "imperative that enemy media be taken down."

  • Unholy Wars

    November 17, 2005 Subscribe

    The conduct of the war in Iraq has embarrassed us, lowered us, endangered us and betrayed our best ideals. The debasement of our soldiers and the lawlessness of our leaders is shocking, merciless and infinitely destabilizing.

  • Genes, Genius, Genies

    November 2, 2005

    The right has ushered in a moment of cult celebrity for the pre-born. But let's not be seduced by this idea of personhood. Remember the poor and not-so-perfect post-born children of America? Aren't they persons, too?

  • Nearer, My God, to Thee

    October 20, 2005

    Follow a mythical voyage through America's nightmare, on a ship with an uncaring captain, a subsequent shipwreck, and the poor are left behind to perish.

  • The Little Black Book of Virtues

    October 6, 2005 Subscribe

    The Wicked Witch stomps in his defense and the wise old tortoise explains his reasoning. But Mother Courage knows the truth behind William Bennett's racist comments.

  • The View From Lott's Porch

    September 8, 2005 Subscribe

    Some storm victims evacuated from New Orleans were "sorted" by age, race or gender. Is breaking up families and prioritizing by race any way to deal with disaster?

  • Midsummer Night's Dream

    August 25, 2005 Subscribe

    A midsummer nightmare of the shiny-eyed zealots who would protect us from terror. Plus, summer reading for the President.

  • Telly-Tommy

    July 28, 2005 Subscribe

    If we're going to have a society surveilled 24/7, let's begin at the top.

  • Extrajudicial Activism

    June 29, 2005 Subscribe

    The Klan was willing to risk that their victims were innocent; we can't take that risk today with accused terrorists.

  • Just a Theory

    June 16, 2005 Subscribe

    Recently it seems discussion on culture goes well beyond careless epithet and into a land with no common ground.

  • Genetically Speaking

    June 2, 2005

    There is no specific genetic marker that distinguishes one race from another.

  • Salt in the Wound

    May 19, 2005 Subscribe

    Why is The New York Times Magazine floating an unsubstantiated theory of genetic determinism?

  • Beyond the Pale

    May 5, 2005 Subscribe

    A closer look at sexual abuse cases makes the questions surrounding them even murkier.

  • The 'Ick' Factor: Villains, Veils and Vision

    April 21, 2005

  • Moral Postman

    April 7, 2005 Subscribe

    The notion of a moral compass is so politically vexed that it ought to be depicted with its little needle spinning.

  • Habeas Corpus

    March 24, 2005 Subscribe

  • Grim Fairy Tales

    March 9, 2005 Subscribe

  • Playing by the Numbers

    February 24, 2005 Subscribe

  • Power and the Word

    February 10, 2005 Subscribe

  • Shrieking Violets

    January 27, 2005 Subscribe

  • Letter

    January 20, 2005 Subscribe

  • Buying In, Selling Out

    January 13, 2005 Subscribe

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Blogs

» Editor's Cut

Around The Nation | Obama, one year on. Plus: Jeremy Scahill takes your questions, and a new video series from The Nation.
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Posted at 2:11 PM ET

» The Notion

Injustice in Illinois | Prosecutors in Illinois should be more concerned with an innocent man behind bars than journalism students' grades.
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24 Comments

» The Beat

Double-Digit Unemployment Is Obama's No. 1 Challenge | Job creation is now the top issue in America. The White House and congressional Dems must recognize this or face serious setbacks politically.
John Nichols
106 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

Obama Fails in Middle East | Clinton delivers the ultimate diss to Abbas.
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107 Comments

» Act Now!

Equality Across America | This week, young LBGT activists are staging a National Week of Initiative.
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16 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Thursday | Dying laptops, recapping the election, the Dow, and the Yankees with the World Series.
Eric Alterman