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Dorothy Roberts, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Northwestern University School of Law, will present the Law School’s 2006-07 George Wythe Lecture at 3:30 pm on Monday, February 12, 2007. Her lecture is titled “Child Welfare’s Paradox.” The lecture will be given in room 127 of the Law School. Admission is free and all are welcome.

Roberts’ lecture will focus on her study of the community-level effects of intense child protection involvement in a black Chicago neighborhood which highlighted three paradoxes about the child welfare system. These paradoxes involve the role of caseworkers, foster parents, and parents in a system that claims to help families while investigating them. She will explore what these paradoxes tell us about the need for child welfare reform.

In addition to holding a chair in law at Northwestern University, Roberts has joint appointments in the Departments of African American Studies and Sociology (courtesy), and is a faculty fellow of the Institute for Policy Research. She has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare. She recently received a National Science Foundation award for a book project studying the relationship between race consciousness in biotechnology and social policy.

Roberts is author of the award-winning Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997; Vintage paperback, 1999) and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books/Civitas, 2001), as well as more than sixty articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, a fellow at Harvard University's Program in Ethics and the Professions, and a Fulbright scholar at the Centre for Gender and Development Studies in Trinidad & Tobago. She serves as a member of the board of directors of the Black Women’s Health Imperative and the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, the executive committee of Cells to Society: The Center on Social Disparities and Health, and a panel of five national experts that is overseeing foster care reform in the state of Washington.

The George Wythe Lecture Series began at the Law School in 1976. Wythe (1726-1806) was a distinguished lawyer, statesman, and judge, and mentor to Thomas Jefferson. In 1779, at Jefferson’s urging, he was appointed as William & Mary’s – and the nation’s – first professor of law.

For more information about the event, please contact Jaime Welch-Donahue at the Law School’s Communications Office (757/221-1840, lawcom@wm.edu).

Media Contact: Suzanne Seurattan at the Office of University Relations (757/221-1631; scseur@wm.edu).

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