Lani Guinier

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Lani Guinier
photograph
Guinier in 1993
Born
Carol Lani Guinier

(1950-04-19)April 19, 1950
New York City, U.S.
DiedJanuary 7, 2022(2022-01-07) (aged 71)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationRadcliffe College (BA)
Yale University (JD)
Occupations
  • Attorney
  • Author
  • Law professor
RelativesEwart Guinier (father)
Maurice Paprin (uncle)

Carol Lani Guinier (

college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to be United States Assistant Attorney General
for Civil Rights, but withdrew the nomination.

Early life and career

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

Afro-American Studies Department in 1969.[5] Paprin, an Ashkenazi-Jewish civil-rights activist, graduated from Hunter College in 1939.[6]
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. Guinier's father was also a national officer for the United Public Workers of America, a Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) union.[7] Her uncle was real estate developer and social activist Maurice Paprin.[8] Guinier moved with her family to Hollis, Queens, in 1956.[9]

Guinier said that she wanted to be a civil rights lawyer since she was twelve years old,

Carter Administration.[12] She 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 (LDF) as an assistant counsel, eventually becoming head of its Voting Rights project.[11] She was a highly successful litigator for LDF, winning 31 of the 32 cases she argued.[13] She also worked on the successful extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982.[13]

Nomination for Assistant Attorney General

Guinier was President

U.S. Justice Department official.[16] The term was perceived by some to be racially loaded, combining the "welfare queen" stereotype with "quota," a buzzword used to challenge affirmative action.[17][18] In fact, Guinier opposed racial quotas, as she attempted to make clear, responding to the misrepresentation of her views by invoking her father's experience at Harvard: "He was a victim of a racial quota, a quota of one. I have never been in favor of quotas. I could not be, knowing my father's experience."[19] As one reviewer of her work wrote: "The remedies Guinier advocates for diluted minority voting rights do not include laws that guarantee election outcomes for disadvantaged groups."[20]

Some journalists also alleged that Guinier's writings indicated that she supported the shaping of electoral districts to ensure a black majority, a process known as "race-conscious districting." Political science and law professor Carol M. Swain argued that Guinier was in favor of "segregating black voters in black-majority districts."[21][22] Guinier was portrayed as a racial polarizer who believed—in the words of George Will—that "only blacks can properly represent blacks."[23]

In the face of the negative media attention, many

Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois (the only African American serving in the Senate at that time),[24] informed Clinton that Guinier's interviews with senators were going poorly and urged him to withdraw Guinier's nomination.[25]

Clinton withdrew Guinier's nomination on June 4, 1993. He stated that Guinier's writings "clearly lend themselves to interpretations that do not represent the views I expressed on civil rights during the [presidential] campaign."

Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford, wrote that the withdrawal was "a grave [loss], both for President Clinton and the country. The President's yanking of the nomination, caving in to shrill, unsubstantiated attacks, was not only unfair, but some would say political cowardice."[27]

Civil rights theories

Alternative voting systems

In her publications, Guinier suggested various strategies for strengthening minority groups' voting power, and rectifying what she characterized as an unfair

Democrats. Guinier also stated that she did not advocate for any single procedural rule, but rather that all alternatives should be considered in the context of litigation "after the court finds a legal violation."[28]

Some of the ideas she considered are:

  • cumulative voting, a system in which each voter has "the same number of votes as there are seats or options to vote for, and they can then distribute their votes in any combination to reflect their preferences"—a system often used on corporate boards in 30 states, as well as by school boards and county commissions
  • multi-member "superdistricts," a strategy that "modifies winner-take-all majority rule to require that something more than a bare majority of voters must approve or concur before action is taken."

Guinier's idea of

One Man, One Vote principles.[29]

Revising affirmative action

From 2001 until her death, Guinier was active in civil rights in higher education, coining the term "confirmative action" to reconceptualize issues of diversity, fairness, and affirmative action. The process of confirmative action, she said, "ties diversity to the admissions criteria for all students, whatever their race, gender, or ethnic background—including people of color, working-class whites, and even children of privilege."[30]

Because public and private institutions of higher learning are almost all to some extent publicly funded (i.e., federal student loans and research grants), Guinier argued that the nation has a vested interest in seeing that all students have access to higher education and that these graduates "contribute as leaders in our democratic polity." By linking diversity to merit, Guinier argued that preferential treatment of minority students "confirms the public character and democratic missions of higher-education institutions. Diversity becomes relevant not only to the college's admissions process but also to its students' educational experiences and to what its graduates actually contribute to American society."[31]

"Political race"

Developing a concept of "political race," Guinier argued that if viewed as a resource from which to develop social critique, attention to exclusions based on race had the potential to produce broad and democratizing effects.[32][33] In The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2002), Guinier and co-author Gerald Torres used the analogy of racial minorities as the canary in the coal mine, alerting others to risks in the environment.[33] As one New York Times review put it, they argue for "reforms based on initiatives that are begun by minority groups but move beyond racial issues because they address the needs of other disadvantaged groups."[34] One examplar Torres and Guinier cite is the way that Hopwood v. Texas, an anti-affirmative action lawsuit, ultimately inspired reform that enlarged college access for all Texas students following minority activists' research on admissions. They found that the majority of admissions to the state’s top colleges came from a handful of the state's high schools, prompting a reform that required the colleges to admit the top 10 percent of all high schools. The Times review concluded, "The goal of reaching such truly evenhanded solutions is what this book generously holds out."[34]

Academic career

Teaching

Guinier began her career in academics in 1989 as a Professor of Law at the

UCLA, Rice, and University of Chicago. In 2007 she was a visiting professor at Columbia Law School, and in 2009 she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.[37]

Guinier took emerita status at Harvard in 2017.[38]

Publications

External videos
video icon Booknotes interview with Guinier on The Tyranny of the Majority, June 26, 1994, C-SPAN
video icon Presentation by Guinier on The Miner's Canary, April 12, 2002, C-SPAN

Guinier authored over two dozen law review articles,[39] as well as five books:

  • Guinier, Lani (1994). The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy. Free Press.
    ISBN 978-0-02-913172-5.[40]
  • Guinier, Lani;
    ISBN 978-0-8070-4405-6.[41]
  • Guinier, Lani (1998). Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice. Simon & Schuster.
    ISBN 978-0-684-81145-1
    .
  • Guinier, Lani; Torres, Gerald (2002). The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy. Harvard University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-674-00469-6
    .
  • Guinier, Lani (January 13, 2015). The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America. Beacon Press.
    ISBN 978-0-8070-0628-3
    .

Personal life and death

Guinier married Nolan Bowie in 1986.[42] They had one son, Nikolas Bowie, who is also a Harvard law professor.[42]

Guinier died from complications of Alzheimer's disease at a care facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 7, 2022, at the age of 71.[4][42]

Honors

During her lifetime, Guinier was honored with the Champion of Democracy Award from the

Fair Vote.[45] In 2021, she received Yale Law School’s highest honor, the Award of Merit.[46][47]

She received eleven honorary degrees,[1] from schools including Hunter College,[6] University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,[48] Smith College,[49] Spelman College,[50] Swarthmore College,[51] and Bard College.[52][12] In 2007 she delivered the Yale Law School Fowler Harper Lecture, entitled "The Political Representative as Powerful Stranger: Challenges for Democracy."[53]

References

  1. ^ a b "Harvard Law School - Lani Guinier biography". Archived from the original on August 22, 2014. Retrieved March 17, 2014.
  2. OCLC 37926306
    .
  3. OCLC 24468213
    .
  4. ^ a b Marquard, Bryan (January 7, 2022). "Lani Guinier, civil rights champion and Harvard law professor, dies at 71". The Boston Globe. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  5. ISBN 0743253515
    .
  6. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331. Archived
    from the original on February 27, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  7. ^ United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress (January 1957). Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States: Hearing Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary. p. 2670.
  8. ^ "Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 20 - IN MEMORY OF MAURICE S. PAPRIN: NEW YORK REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER AND ADVOCATE, EDUCATOR AND PROMOTER OF SOCIAL WELFARE". www.govinfo.gov. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  9. ^ Guinier, Lani. "Identity and Demography" Archived December 13, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, March 25, 2013. Accessed February 20, 2019. "When my family moved to Hollis, Queens in 1956, the neighborhood changed with our arrival."
  10. ^ Schudel, Matt (January 11, 2022). "Law professor's Justice Dept. nomination became a Clinton-era controversy". Washington Post. p. B6. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
  11. ^ a b "Balancing Race and Gender: LDF Women Pioneers" Archived March 17, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, The Defenders Online, March 31, 2009
  12. ^ a b c d e "Lani Guinier, CV". Archived from the original on April 21, 2021. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  13. ^ a b "LDF Mourns the Passing of Trailblazing Harvard Law Professor and Voting Rights Defender Lani Guinier". NAACP Legal Defense Fund. January 7, 2022.
  14. ^ "Reno Completes Most of Lineup At Justice Dept". The New York Times. April 30, 1993. Archived from the original on November 5, 2018. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  15. ^ Kantor, Jodi (July 30, 2008). "Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019. Retrieved October 27, 2008.
  16. Wall Street Journal
    op-ed, April 30, 1993.
  17. ^ Ireland, Patricia (June 27, 1993). "Still Fighting the Double Standard". Chicago Tribune. p. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  18. National Public Radio
    (NPR). January 19, 2003. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  19. ^ Tackett, Michael (June 5, 1993). "Guinier Defends Her views, Denies She Backs Quotas". The Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on March 8, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  20. Christian Science Monitor
    . March 21, 1994.
  21. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived
    from the original on November 23, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  22. ^ Cohen, Joshua (June 13, 1993). "n the End, Distortion Triumphed Over Lani Guinier's Writings". The New York Times. p. 141.
  23. ^ Will, George F. (June 13, 1993). "Sympathy For Guinier". Newsweek. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  24. ^ Clinton, William Jefferson (2004). My Life. New York City: Knopf. [page needed].
  25. ^ Leff, Laurel (1993), "From legal scholar to quota queen: what happens when politics pulls the press into the groves of academe," Columbia Journalism Review 32:3 (September–October 1993).
  26. ^ a b Savage, David G. (June 5, 1993). "Guinier's Ideas Viewed as Largely Theoretical : Nominee: In her 'academic' article on voting rights, the conclusions she reaches appear to be tentative". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 18, 2014. Retrieved March 17, 2014.
  27. ^ "Notable Quotes for 1993". archive.fairvote.org. Archived from the original on March 18, 2014. Retrieved March 17, 2014.
  28. ^ (1994:14)
  29. ISBN 9781783605422
    .
  30. ^ Guinier (2001), "Colleges Should Take 'Confirmative Action' in Admissions" Archived June 28, 2002, at the Wayback Machine, Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved on February 28, 2011.
  31. ^ Guinier (2001), "Colleges Should Take 'Confirmative Action' in Admissions" Archived June 28, 2002, at the Wayback Machine, Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved on December 9, 2008.
  32. ISSN 0022-3816
    .
  33. ^
    S2CID 144584585
    .
  34. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  35. ^ Risen, Clay (January 8, 2022). "Lani Guinier, Legal Scholar at the Center of Controversy, Dies at 71". The New York Times. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  36. ^ "HLS Professor Lani Guinier". www.law.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  37. ^ "Lani Guinier | Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences". casbs.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on December 12, 2018. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  38. ^ a b Milano, Brett (January 7, 2022). "In Memoriam: Lani Guinier 1950 - 2022". Harvard Law Today. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  39. ^ "Harvard Law School - Lani Guinier publications". Archived from the original on March 18, 2014. Retrieved March 17, 2014.
  40. ^ 1994 review: Sunstein, Cass R. "Voting Rites". The New Republic. pp. 34–38. Archived from the original on May 17, 2017. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  41. JSTOR 4316616
    .
  42. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331. Archived
    from the original on January 8, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  43. ^ "Previous Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award Recipients". www.americanbar.org. Archived from the original on December 18, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  44. ^ "about us | FairTest". www.fairtest.org. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  45. ^ "Lani Guinier: Champion of Democracy". Fair Vote. Archived from the original on July 17, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  46. ^ "Yale Law School Mourns the Loss of Lani Guinier '74". law.yale.edu. January 7, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  47. ^ "Symposium Honors Professor and Civil Rights Lawyer Lani Guinier '74". law.yale.edu. November 18, 2021. Archived from the original on December 14, 2021. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  48. ^ News Bureau (November 13, 2003). "Lani Guinier to speak at 2004 Commencement". news.illinois.edu. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  49. ^ "Lani Guinier to Deliver Smith Commencement Address". www.smith.edu. Archived from the original on November 5, 2020. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  50. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients 1977 - Present" (PDF). President's Office. November 2019. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 12, 2019. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  51. ^ "Past Speakers and Honorary Degree Recipients". www.swarthmore.edu. July 8, 2014. Archived from the original on December 27, 2021. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  52. ^ cyber (January 8, 2022). "BARD COLLEGE TO HOLD ONE HUNDRED FORTY-THIRD COMMENCEMENT ON SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2003 Civil Rights Champion and Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinier to Deliver Commencement Address". News The Cyber Live. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  53. ^ "Lani Guinier '74 Discusses Challenges for Democracy April 30". law.yale.edu. April 24, 2007. Retrieved January 8, 2022.

External links

Library resources about
Lani Guinier
By Lani Guinier
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