User:JRobble/sandbox/Angela Onwuachi-Willig

'''Angela Onwuachi-Willig is an American legal scholar. She is the 18th Dean and the inaugural Ryan Roth Gallo and Ernest J. Gallo Professor at Boston University School of Law with expertise in critical race theory, employment discrimination, and family law.  She joined Boston University School of Law on August 15th, 2018 as Dean and Professor of Law, having previously been the Chancellor's Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. '''

Early life and education
Onwuachi-Willig was raised in Houston, Texas. She was raised by her parents, Nigerian immigrants, in an apartment complex that housed mostly African-American and Latino tenants. However, the school system Onwuachi-Willig attended for her primary education was relatively integrated, and her high school experience included racial riots.

After her primary education, Onwuachi-Willig graduated with a B.A. in American Studies from Grinnell College, where she met her husband, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Following her undergraduate career, Onwuachi-Willig earned her J.D. at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was a Clarence Darrow Scholar and served as a note editor on the Michigan Law Review and an associate editor for the founding issue of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law. In May 2017, she earned a PhD in Sociology and African American Studies from Yale University. Her thesis, “The Trauma of Till and Trayvon,” explored cultural trauma relating to race from a political and sociological standpoint.

Career
Following law school, Onwuachi-Willig held clerk positions for both The Honorable Solomon Oliver Jr., U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Ohio and The Honorable Karen Nelson Moore, U.S. Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She was a labor and employment associate at Jones Day in Cleveland, Ohio and Foley Hoag in Boston, Massachussetts before she became a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law. In 2006, Onwuachi-Willig became the inaugural Charles and Marion Kierscht Professor of Law at the University of Iowa, where she founded the Lutie A. Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Workshop and Writing Retreat.

In 2010, Onwuachi-Willig was elected to the American Law Institute. '''In 2011, she was one of nine finalists nominated to fill three open seats with the Iowa Supreme Court. She was the youngest nominee, as well as the only woman and only member of a racial minority. She was not selected. ' That same year, Onwuachi-Willig was named to the National Law Journal''’s “Minority 40 Under 40” list. Since 2013, she has contributed articles to HuffPost on topics of law and race. In 2014, Onwuachi-Willig joined the Common Cause National Governing Board. Then in 2016, she left the University of Iowa to become the Chancellor's Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

From 2017-2018, Onwuachi-Willig had a fellowship with the American Bar Foundation as the William H. Neukom Fellows Research Chair in Diversity and Law. The first of Onwuachi-Willig's two research projects during her fellowship was a study of the cases of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin, comparing the two because both cases are examples of an African-American man's killer being acquitted in court. Onwuachi-Willig also studied the National Bar Association (NBA), which is the largest network of African-American lawyers and judges in the United States. She focused specifically on the foundation and development of the NBA and the conditions that led its founders to create such a network.

In June 2018, she was elected to a 3-year term on the Law School Admission Council's (LSAC) Board of Trustees. Later that summer, Onwuachi-Willig began her tenure as the dean of the Boston University School of Law, succeeding Maureen O'Rourke. As a scholar of racial and gender inequality, Onwuachi-Willig cited Boston University School of Law's "history of access and diversity" as her reason for leaving UC Berkeley and accepting the role of dean at BU.

In July 2019, Onwuachi-Willig was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Judicial Nominations, which examines applicants for federal District Court judgeships in Massachusetts. In recognition of her work in the areas of critical race theory, racial and gender inequality, and anti-discrimination law, Onwuachi-Willig was named the first Ryan Roth Gallo and Ernest J. Gallo Professor in February 2021.

Onwuachi-Willig has served as Chair for the Employment Discrimination Law and Law and the Humanities academic sections of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). She has also served as Chair of the Minority Groups affinity section of the AALS and is a trustee for Grinnell College. She is a member of the bar in the State of Ohio, the State of Iowa, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Scholarship
Onwuachi-Willig's scholarship is written from a "liberal black womanist" perspective.

According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family (Yale University Press, 2013)
Onwuachi-Willig examines interracial couples, multiracial families, and how the law can result in them finding themselves "placeless" in society. Using Rhinelander v. Rhinelander as a starting point, she presents her own research on modern-day multiracial families, as well as personal anecdotes, and ultimately argues that multiracial families need stronger legal protections from discrimination, not only in personal settings, but also in the workplace. Onwuachi-Willig proposes that "interraciality," where individuals consider themselves to be one race but are part of an interracial family, should be a category protected by anti-discrimination laws. Some have questioned whether this would provide enough protection for interracial families, especially those that do not present as a traditional nuclear family. It has been suggested that encouraging acceptance of more types of family structures might better protect multiracial families.

Vulnerable Populations and Transformative Law Teaching: A Critical Reader (Carolina Academic Press, 2011)
This volume, co-edited with Raquel Aldana, Steven Bender, Olympia Duhart, Michele Benedetto Neitz, Hari Osofosky, and Hazel Weiser, is a compilation of essays adapted from presentations given at a March 2010 teaching conference titled "Vulnerable Populations and Economic Realities."

Articles
In addition to furthering the scholarly conversation, Onwuachi-Willig's articles have provided guidance in court decisions. As of January 2020, her most-cited articles include:
 * Angela Onwuachi-Willing, The Return of the Ring: Welfare Reform's Marriage Cure as the Revival of Post-Bellum Control, 93 Calif. L. Rev. 1647 (2005): Onwuachi-Willig details the U.S. Congress's attempts to alleviate poverty among welfare recipients by encouraging marriage. While this is the stated goal, she also suspects Congress of trying to persuade African-American families to adopt Anglo-American family values and practices. She compares this to Reconstruction, when government-promoted marriages between former slaves strengthened black families, but also strengthened patriarchy in the black community and shifted economic responsibility for black mothers and children away from the government.


 * Angela I. Onwuachi-Willing & Mario L. Barnes, By Any Other Name: On Being Regarded as Black, and Why Title VII Should Apply Even if Lakisha and Jamal are White, 2005 Wis. L. Rev. 1283 (2005): Onwuachi-Willig and Mario Barnes show how people use proxies (i.e., applicants' names) to discriminate based on protected characteristics, such as race and national origin. They argue individuals who experience this discrimination should be protected by Title VII, even if they do not actually possess the protected characteristic (i.e., are not phenotypically black). They believe this could be achieved if Title VII's requirement that discrimination be "because of" a person's race, national origin, or religion was interpreted to include instances where a person is "regarded as" a particular race, national origin, or religion. Precedent for extending this kind of protection can be found in the Americans with Disabilities Act, which includes the "regarded as" language.


 * Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Undercover Other, 94 Calif. L. Rev. 873 (2006): Onwuachi-Willig examines the social construction of race, specifically the social construction of "authentic blackness," which includes identifying as a political liberal or progressive. She also notes the similarities of passing by people in interracial relationships and gays and lesbians to adhere to social constructions of race and sexuality. In addition to examining how people engage in passing in society at large, Onwuachi-Willig also discusses "in-group passing," where individuals "may feel compelled to perform their identities in certain ways" to be seen as a legitimate member within a smaller community.


 * Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Just Another Brother on the SCT: What Justice Clarence Thomas Teaches Us About the Influence of Racial Identity, 90 Iowa L. Rev. 931 (2004-2005): Onwuachi-Willig examines Justice Clarence Thomas's decisions and concludes he adheres to a unique form of Black conservatism, which values black victims' rights over black criminal defendants' rights and is concerned about stigmatizing black affirmative action beneficiaries.


 * Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Another Hair Piece: Exploring New Strands of Analysis Under Title VII, 98 Geo. L.J. 1079 (2010): Onwuachi-Willig asserts that Title VII's protection against racial discrimination should extend to black women's hairstyles because the physical differences between black and white women's hair are immutable. She suggests that if courts had a better understanding of black women's hair, they would see that hairstyle is a proxy for race.

Awards

 * AALS Derrick Bell Award (2006)
 * Fellow, American Bar Foundation (2011)
 * Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Clyde Ferguson Award (2015)
 * Gertrude Rush Award (2016) from the Iowa Organization of Women Attorneys
 * John Hope Franklin, Jr., Prize (2018) from the Iowa Chapter of the National Bar Association Law and Society
 * AALS Impact Award (2021) for the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project

Personal life
Onwuachi-Willig is married to physicist Jacob Willig-Onwuachi.