Remembering Lani Guinier (1950-2022)

"When I left the University of Pennsylvania to join Harvard’s Department of Afro-American Studies, as it was called in 1993, my friend and Penn colleague Lani Guinier reminded me that I was joining the department that she had played a role in founding. This was also the department founded in 1969 and first chaired by her father Ewart Guinier.  Lani would later join the Harvard Law School faculty in 1998. In one of her visits to my office in the Barker Center, I remember showing Lani the framed collage of photographic headshots that included her as an undergraduate among the photographs of other student founders of the department. The collage sits proudly on a wall in the Alain Locke Seminar Room of the Department of African and African American Studies, reminding each new class not only of the passing years, but of a promising and purposeful life through the example of the brilliant scholar, inspiring teacher, and civil rights lawyer she became. Lani Guinier will long be remembered as a true champion of equal justice for all."   – Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham