Dorothy E. Roberts

Dorothy E. Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at University of Pennsylvania, where she is also founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society in the Center for Africana Studies.

Her work in law and public policy focuses on urgent social justice issues in policing, family regulation, science, medicine, and bioethics. Her major works include Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century; Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare; and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. She is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters, as well as a co-editor of six books on such topics as constitutional law and women and the law. She is a 2024 MacArthur Fellow.

Recognitions of her scholarship and public service include election to the National Academy of Medicine, Society of Family Planning Lifetime Achievement Award, and American Psychiatric Association Solomon Carter Fuller Award. She previously held appointments at Northwestern University School of Law and Rutgers University School of Law - Newark. She earned her J.D. at Harvard Law School.