Top Critical Race Theory Influencers
In today’s news, Critical Race Theory has become a hot political topic. It seems as if CRT burst on the scene overnight. However, Critical Race has been around for several decades. In this introduction to Critical Race Theory, I will briefly explain what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is and how it originated. I will also distinguish it from theories that it has been confused with. Finally, I will attempt to rescue CRT from several misunderstandings or false interpretations by its critics.
Critical Race Theory: What It Is and What It Is Not
The Origin of Critical Race Theory
In the 1970s, a group of legal scholars realized that the Law was not completely neutral. Law is often created and interpreted in such a way that some social groups have an advantage over others. This realization led to a deconstruction of Law and a critique of the origin and function of it. This deconstruction and critique of the Law was called Critical Legal Studies (CLS).
Shortly after the development of CLS, a few Black and white legal scholars realized that CLS failed to address the role that racism plays in the construction of some of our laws. Derrick Bell , Kimberlé Crenshaw , and Alan David Freeman (a white scholar) began to publish essays that addressed the race issue in legal studies and Law. Their work and the work of many others who followed was called CRT. In fact, it was Kimberlé Crenshaw who coined the term.
Not only was CRT a response to elements of racism in the construction, interpretation and application of some laws, it was also a response to the Civil Rights Movement and the liberalism embedded in CLS. Regarding the Civil Rights Movement, CRT explores the ways in which laws can be racially manipulated even after the adoption of new civil rights laws. The theorists who work in CRT noticed that even after civil rights legislation, Black people were still victims of patterns of inequality. Regarding the liberalism of CLS, CRT attempted to revive a form of race-consciousness.
With its explicit embrace of race-consciousness, Critical Race Theory aims to reexamine the terms by which race and racism have been negotiated in American consciousness, and to recover and revitalize the radical tradition of race-consciousness among African-Americans and other peoples of color—a tradition that was discarded when integration, assimilation and the ideal of color-blindness became the official norms of racial enlightenment.
— Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed The Movement
The embrace of race consciousness is often interpreted by white conservatives and even some liberals as racism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Racism requires more than race-consciousness. It requires hatred of another race and the economic, political, social, and symbolic power to dehumanize and oppress the hated race. Race-consciousness merely refers to the social fact that people of different races are situated differently in our society. It is not the case that the playing field is even for all Americans. Knowledge of the way in which the playing field is tilted for the advantage of one group over another requires recognition of the groups involved. Therefore, color-blindness is merely an ideal at this moment. To not see color is to ignore real race-based inequalities in our society.
Critical Race Theory is Not Marxism
Many opponents of CRT have equated it with Marxism. This identification of CRT with Marxism simply indicates a critical failure to understand both CRT and Marxism. These are two very different forms of analysis addressing two different social problems. The two theories are distinguished by the type of questions raised at their origins. Marxism does not raise the question of racism, race-consciousness, racial discrimination, etc. It has its origins in questions about economic exploitation. Marxism is self-defined as a critique of political economy and does not address race. The entire system of thought is a critique of the function of capitalism and the form of social organization produced by capitalism.
CRT, as we have seen, originates with questions of racialized inequalities and the role of Law in creating and perpetuating these inequalities. However, it is the case that some of the legal scholars who work in CLS may from time to time apply a Marxist critique to the role of Law in supporting economic inequalities. This, however, is a separate issue from the issues addressed by CRT. While some critical race theorists may also be Marxist, CRT itself is not Marxist. Critics who identify CRT with Marxism are merely trying to delegitimize CRT by associating it with a form of theory that Americans tend to hate and know very little about.
Critical Race Theory and Other Academic Forms of Race Theory
Both opponents of CRT and those in the media who have given the subject so much attention of late tend to conflate CRT with any critique or analysis of racism. One of the most striking things about the recent attack on CRT is the claim that it is being taught to our children in K-12. This is completely false. CRT is exclusively taught in law schools and in some colleges and universities. To discuss slavery or racism in K-12 does not amount to teaching CRT. It is impossible to teach American history adequately without discussing slavery and racism. Any presentation of American history must necessarily include the Black experience which is the history of the struggle against slavery and racism. To omit this side of American history is to insist on teaching a false narrative and calling it history.
Finally, just as legal scholars recognized the role that systemic racism played in the constitution, interpretation, and application of Law, scholars from a wide range of other areas of knowledge recognized the same in their disciplines. Hence, after the Civil Rights Movement, the critique of racism in its overt and covert forms became an object of study in many areas. This was largely due to the efforts of Black scholars who became aware that most white scholars tended to ignore issues of race and Black history altogether. In the 1970s Black Studies emerged in many colleges and universities as an effort to tell the whole story about American history.
Later, other academic disciplines began to include hitherto excluded Black history and thought. Today, there are many areas of inquiry that examine systemic racism in its many forms. All of these areas of knowledge have been labeled by the media and the critics as CRT. It is important to be aware of the difference in origin of these bodies of knowledge. Nevertheless, they all share with CRT the goal of understanding racism and how it continues to manifest itself in contemporary American society.
CRT Teaches Students to Love America, Not Hate It
Many of the critics of CRT claim that it teaches children to hate America. This is a strange claim. When I hear the term America it makes me think about the American people, not some abstract idea called America. If I think about the American people in their concrete daily lives, I am forced to recognize the problems by which the people are burdened. I am forced by my view of the daily lives of the American people to recognize the inequalities from which some of them suffer. Love for America cannot be separated from love of the American people. Love for the American people compels me to want to change the conditions that cause inequality among them. Hence, CRT has its origins in love for America, an America that is not merely an abstraction. At the end of the day, CRT is a form of self-critique. Such a critique is absolutely necessary for the sake of progress. The individual human being can become a better person only if he or she can engage in self-critique or self-criticism. This self-critique reveals to us our flaws so that we may have the opportunity to overcome them. It is only by recognizing our faults that we can reconcile and achieve real progress. CRT gives America the opportunity to face its faults and overcome them. That sounds a lot more like love than hate.
Top Critical Race Theory Influencers 2000-2020
Methodology:
In what follows, we offer a broadly defined look at influential race theorists (see below) over the last 20 years. Based on our ranking methodology, these individuals have demonstrated significant academic impact in a variety of disciplines including critical race theory and other closely related disciplines, between the years of 2000–2020. Influence can be achieved through a variety of means. Some scholars have pioneered areas of the field, while others may have gained influence through popularity or activism — but all are academicians. The ranked order does not imply the level of influence in CRT specifically. Rather, these are influential scholars whose writings have impacted conversations around race, whether this is their primary focus or not.
We chose to rank influential scholars outside of the narrow focus of critical race theory (CRT) because critical race theory is a specific area of focus in legal studies, but there’s a current misrepresentation of what CRT is in the media. Since the misrepresentation of CRT is what we’re up against, we wanted to show the broader array of influential scholars from directely related areas of study such as: social and cultural anthropology, sociology, philosophy of race, African studies, Black feminism, Black liberation theology, and more, as well as those studying CRT proper. Indeed, our interdisciplinary approach not only shows a much richer gallery of influential scholars examining issues of race, but in general it brings to the forefront some scholars and theories that informed the creation of CRT in legal studies. While there’s considerable overlap in many of these scholars’ influence in multiple fields of study, we’ve categoriezed the listing to show more precisely why they are featured in our list of CRT influencers.
There are a few names on the list that may appear to be tangential at first glance. Sociologists and anthropologists on our list have impacted the general area of race studies. They have been widely cited for the relevant aspects of their works, so we’ve included them on our list. Perhaps more interestingly, several influential gender theorists are featured on our list because the nature of their work revealed striking parallels between feminism and gender theories, and race theory, particularly at the intersection of identity and socially-constructed inequality.
We are open to adding to and refining this list as worthy candidates are illuminated. We recognize that race, feminism, and gender studies are all rapidly evolving areas of study today. Email us
Read more about our methodologies
Influencers categorized by relevant areas of studies
Top Critical Race Theorists
- #1
Kimberlé Crenshaw
#20121Overall Influence1959 - Present (65 years) - #2
Patricia Hill Collins
#794Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years) - #3
David Theo Goldberg
#7220Overall Influence1952 - Present (72 years) - #4
Charles W. Mills
#7135Overall Influence1951 - 2021 (70 years) - #5
Mari Matsuda
#12995Overall Influence1956 - Present (68 years)Mari J. Matsuda is an American lawyer, activist, and law professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She was the first tenured female Asian American law professor in the United States, at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law in 1998 and one of the leading voices in critical race theory since its inception. Matsuda returned to Richardson in the fall of 2008. Prior to her return, Matsuda was a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, specializing in the fields of torts, constitutional law, legal his... - #6
Gloria Ladson-Billings
#8198Overall Influence1947 - Present (77 years)Gloria Jean Ladson-Billings is an American pedagogical theorist and teacher educator known for her work in the fields of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory, and the pernicious effects of systemic racism and economic inequality on educational opportunities. Her book The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African-American Children is a significant text in the field of education. Ladson-Billings is Professor Emerita and formerly the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison... - #7
Richard Delgado
#8397Overall Influence1939 - Present (85 years)Richard Delgado is an American legal scholar considered to be one the founders of critical race theory, along with Derrick Bell. Delgado is currently a Distinguished Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Previously, he was the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. He has written and co-authored numerous articles and books, many with his wife, Jean Stefancic. He is also notable for his scholarship on hate speech and for introducing storytelling into legal scholarship. - #8
Derrick Bell
#3837Overall Influence1930 - 2011 (81 years)Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. Bell worked for first the U.S. Justice Department, then the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he supervised over 300 school desegregation cases in Mississippi. - #9
Patricia J. Williams
#7046Overall Influence1951 - Present (73 years)Patricia J. Williams is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system. Early life Williams received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in 1972, and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1975. - #10
Faye V. Harrison
#175496Overall Influence1951 - Present (73 years)Faye Harrison is a professor of African-American Studies and Anthropology and Faculty Affiliate for the Program on Women & Gender in Global Perspectives, the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies and the Center for African Studies, all for the University of Illinois. She earned her B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D from Stanford University.
Harrison’s research interests have taken her to Nigeria, South Africa, Japan, Jamaica, Denmark and many more countries. She has explored racism and human rights, gendered division of labor, gang politics and criminality, and feminism.
She has been honored many times for her contributions to the field of anthropology. She has received the Society for the Anthropology of North America Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America, the Distinguished Service Award from the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and the Presidential Award of the American Anthropological Association. She was chair for the Commission on the Anthropology of Women from 1993 to 2009 and president of the Association of Black Anthropologists from 1989 to 1991.
- #11
Sally Haslanger
#9576Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years) - #12
Juana María Rodríguez
#127693Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years)Juana María Rodríguez is a Cuban-American professor of Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly writing in queer theory, critical race theory, and performance studies highlights the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and embodiment in constructing subjectivity.
Critical Legal Studies
- #1
Duncan Kennedy
#2196Overall Influence1942 - Present (82 years)Duncan Kennedy is a legal scholar and held the Carter Professorship of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School until 2015. Now emeritus, he is best known as one of the founders of the critical legal studies movement. - #2
Peter Gabel
#21316Overall Influence1947 - Present (77 years)Peter Gabel was an American law academic and associate editor of Tikkun, a bi-monthly Jewish critique of politics, culture, and society, He wrote a number of articles for the magazine on subjects ranging from the original intent of the framers of the Constitution to the creationism/evolution controversy . - #3
Gary Peller
#14792Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years)Gary Peller is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a prominent member of the critical legal studies and critical race theory movements. Education and early career Peller received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University in 1977 and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School where he served as a member of the Harvard Law Review. Peller then clerked for Morris Lasker, a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He is currently a member of the Maryland state bar. - #4
Kendall Thomas
#9434Overall InfluenceKendall Thomas is Nash Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, at Columbia Law School. Biography Kendall Thomas did his J.D. at Yale University’s Law School in 1983 after having obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Yale in 1978.
Race Theory
- #1
Linda Martín Alcoff
#6700Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years) - #2
Mustafa Emirbayer
#13342Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years) - #3
Howard Winant
#7088Overall Influence1946 - Present (78 years)Howard Winant is an American sociologist and race theorist. Winant is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Winant is best known for developing the theory of racial formation along with Michael Omi. Winant’s research and teachings revolve around race and racism, comparative historical sociology, political sociology, social theory, and human rights. - #4
Janet E. Helms
#11709Overall Influence2000 - Present (24 years) - #5
Matthew Barnett Robinson
#33763Overall Influence1970 - Present (54 years) - #6
Judith Butler
#42Overall Influence1956 - Present (68 years) - #7
Ulf Hannerz
#5202Overall Influence1942 - Present (82 years)Areas of Specialization: Urban and Media Anthropology
Ulf Hannerz is an emeritus professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University, which is where he also earned his Ph.D. As an anthropologist, he has focused his research on urban and media anthropology. His research has taken him to locations in the United States, the Caribbean, and West Africa.His current interests involve post-Cold War future facing scenarios with impacts on a global scale. He examines apocalyptic predictions as a product of culture and spread around the world by way of ubiquitous technology. He has written books such as World Watching: Streetcorners and Newsbeats on a Journey through Anthropology and Writing Future Worlds: An Anthropologist Explores Global Scenarios.
- #8
Ibram X. Kendi
#4844Overall Influence1982 - Present (42 years)Ibram Xolani Kendi is an American author, professor, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America. In July 2020, he founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University where he as director. Kendi was included in Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Kendi has attracted criticism for his comments on Amy Coney Barrett as well as for alleged financial mismanagement of the Center for Antiracist Research.
African Studies
- #1
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
#1612Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years)Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon. - #2
Molefi Kete Asante
#1546Overall Influence1942 - Present (82 years)Molefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies. - #3
Lewis Gordon
#8230Overall Influence1962 - Present (62 years)Lewis Ricardo Gordon is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. He has written particularly extensively on Africana and black existentialism, postcolonial phenomenology, race and racism, and on the works and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. His most recent book is titled: Fear of Black Consciousness. - #4
Anita L. Allen
#17090Overall Influence1953 - Present (71 years) - #5
John Comaroff
#4540Overall Influence1945 - Present (79 years)John Comaroff is the Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, and Oppenheimer Research Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. Comaroff also serves as a research professor at the American Bar Foundation. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Cape Town and his doctorate from the London School of Economics.
Comaroff has held numerous influential teaching positions, includng the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago as well as positions at Duke University, Tel Aviv University, and University of Wales. He has been recognized an Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town since 2004. He has also held fellowships at the University of Manchester in the International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research and for the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin.
His research interests have included occult rituals, religious practices, culture, society, and law throughout Botswana and South Africa, where he was born and raised. Most recently, his research in South Africa focuses on crime and policing in the North West Province, the commodification of ethnic identity and cultural property among Tswana and San peoples, and the case of Khulekani Khumalo which examines the effects of imposture and personhood as a result of postcolonial social conditions.
- #6
Caroline Elkins
#15332Overall Influence1969 - Present (55 years)Caroline Elkins is Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Affiliated Professor at Harvard Law School, and the Founding Oppenheimer Faculty Director of Harvard’s Center for African Studies. - #7
Manning Marable
#6557Overall Influence1950 - 2011 (61 years)William Manning Marable was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He wrote several texts and was active in numerous progressive political causes. - #8
Jean Comaroff
#12363Overall Influence1946 - Present (78 years)Jean Comaroff is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. She is an expert on the effects of colonialism on people in Southern Africa. Until 2012, Jean was the Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. - #9
Toyin Falola
#7697Overall Influence1953 - Present (71 years)Toyin Omoyeni Falola is a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies. Falola is a Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria and of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, and has served as the president of the African Studies Association. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. - #10
Hazel Carby
#14544Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years)Hazel Vivian Carby is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and of American Studies. She served as Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. - #11
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
#21483Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years)Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is a Malawian historian, literary critic, novelist, short-story writer and blogger at The Zeleza Post. He was president of the African Studies Association. He was the Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Quinnipiac University. He served as Vice Chancellor of the United States International University Africa from 2016 to 2021, located in Nairobi, Kenya. He served as Associate Provost and North Star Distinguished Professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio from 2021 to 2023, and was appointed to his current position as Senior Advisor for Strategic Init... - #12
Stephen Adebanji Akintoye
#13751Overall Influence1935 - Present (89 years)Stephen Adebanji Akintoye, also known as S. Banji Akintoye , is a Nigerian-born academic, historian and writer. He attended Christ’s School Ado Ekiti, Nigeria from 1951–1955, and studied history at the University College , Ibadan , and doctoral studies from 1963-1966 at the University of Ibadan, where he was awarded a PhD in History in 1966. He taught at the History Department at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he became a professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies from 1974-1977. He has also taught African History in universities in the United States includ... - #13
Michèle Lamont
#25587Overall Influence1957 - Present (67 years) - #14
Eddie Glaude
#36324Overall Influence1968 - Present (56 years)Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is an American academic, author, and current-affairs pundit. He is currently the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. He has previously been the chair of Princeton’s Center for African American Studies and the chair of its Department of African American Studies. He has authored five books, and edited or co-edited two others. He has published articles on U.S. media platforms such as Time and the Huffington Post. He is a contributor to the MSNBC cable news channel, and frequently appears as a commentator o... - #15
Frieda Ekotto
#108159Overall Influence1959 - Present (65 years)Frieda Ekotto is a Francophone African woman novelist and literary critic. She is Professor of AfroAmerican and African Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan and is currently the Hunting Family Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities. She is best known for her novels, which focus on gender and sexuality in Sub-Saharan Africa, and her work on the writer Jean Genet, particular her political analysis of his prison writing, and his impact as a race theorist in the Francophone world. Her research and teaching focuses on literature, film, race and law in the Francophone... - #16
Raymond Winbush
#30232Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years)Raymond Arnold Winbush a.k.a. Tikari Bioko is an American scholar and activist known for his systems-thinking approaches to understanding the impact of racism/white supremacy on the global African community. He is currently Research Professor and Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. - #17
Jennifer Hochschild
#46375Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years) - #18
Paula D. McClain
#48885Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years)Paula Denice McClain , is a professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses primarily on racial minority-group politics and urban politics. She is co-director of Duke’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association’s Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke. - #19
Valeria Sinclair-Chapman
#126191Overall Influence1969 - Present (55 years)Valeria Sinclair-Chapman is an American political scientist, currently a professor of political science and African-American studies at Purdue University. Sinclair-Chapman studies American political institutions, the representation of minority groups in the United States Congress, and minority political participation, particularly how excluded groups come to be included in American politics. - #20
Dara Strolovitch
#133330Overall InfluenceDara Strolovitch is an American political scientist, currently Professor of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Political Science at Yale University. She studies the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the context of intersectional societal inequality, and the representation of those who are marginalized in multiple overlapping ways. - #21
Naomi Murakawa
#56197Overall Influence - #22
Nadia Brown
#154212Overall Influence - #23
Shaun L. Gabbidon
#12956Overall Influence1967 - Present (57 years) - #24
Kim F. Hall
#125445Overall Influence1961 - Present (63 years)Kim F. Hall is the Lucyle Hook professor of English and professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College. She was born in 1961 in Baltimore. She is an expert on black feminist studies, critical race theory, early modern and Renaissance literature.
Philosophy of Race
- #1
Cornel West
#789Overall Influence1953 - Present (71 years) - #2
Kwame Anthony Appiah
#1551Overall Influence1954 - Present (70 years) - #3
Robert Bernasconi
#4083Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years) - #4
George Yancy
#14783Overall Influence1961 - Present (63 years) - #5
Tina Fernandes Botts
#32268Overall InfluenceTina Fernandes Botts is an American legal scholar and philosophy professor currently teaching at the San Joaquin College of Law. She is known for her work in legal hermeneutics, intersectionality, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of race . Previous posts include Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College; Visiting Professor of Law at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law; Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fresno; Visiting Assistant Professor of philosophy at Oberlin College; Fellow in Law and Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and A...
Anthropology
- #1
Andrey Korotayev
#1439Overall Influence1961 - Present (63 years) - #2
Keith Hart
#14531Overall Influence1943 - Present (81 years)Keith Hart is a British anthropologist and writer living in Paris. His main research has focused on economic anthropology, Africa and the African diaspora, and money. He has taught at universities including East Anglia, Manchester, Yale and the Chicago, as well as at Cambridge University where he was director of the African Studies Centre. He contributed the concept of the informal economy to development studies and has published widely on economic anthropology. He is the author of The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World and Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes. His written work f... - #3
Georges Balandier
#5626Overall Influence1920 - 2016 (96 years)Georges Balandier was a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balandier was born in Aillevillers-et-Lyaumont. He was a professor at the Sorbonne , and is a member of the Center for African Studies , a research center of the École pratique des hautes études . He held for many years the Editorship of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie and edited the series Sociologie d’Aujourd’hui at Presses Universitaires de France. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1976. He died on 5 October 2016 at the age of 95. - #4
Melville J. Herskovits
1895 - 1963 (68 years)Melville Jean Herskovits was an American anthropologist who helped to first establish African and African Diaspora studies in American academia. He is known for exploring the cultural continuity from African cultures as expressed in African-American communities. He worked with his wife Frances Herskovits, also an anthropologist, in the field in South America, the Caribbean and Africa. They jointly wrote several books and monographs. - #5
Andrea Abrams
#160229Overall InfluenceDr. Andrea Abrams is an American anthropologist, Associate Professor, President of the Association of Black Anthropologists and Author of God and Blackness: Race, Gender and Identity in a Middle Class Afrocentric Church. Andrea is currently an associate professor of Anthropology, Gender Studies and African American Studies at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, as well as the Chair of the Gender Studies Program. In 2018, she was named associate vice president for diversity affairs & special assistant to the president, and in 2021 was named vice president for diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Liberation Theology
- #1
James H. Cone
#3058Overall Influence1938 - 2018 (80 years)James Hal Cone was an American theologian. He is best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of ... - #2
Jacquelyn Grant
#30417Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years)Jacquelyn Grant is an American theologian, a Methodist minister. Alongside Katie Cannon, Delores S. Williams, and Kelly Brown Douglas, Grant is considered one of the four founders of womanist theology. Womanist theology addresses theology from the viewpoint of Black women, reflecting on both their perspectives and experience in regards to faith and moral standards. Grant is currently the Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
Ranked by Overall Influence
- #1
Cornel West
#789Overall Influence1953 - Present (71 years) - #2
Patricia Hill Collins
#794Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years) - #3
Kimberlé Crenshaw
#20121Overall Influence1959 - Present (65 years) - #4
Kwame Anthony Appiah
#1551Overall Influence1954 - Present (70 years) - #5
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
#1612Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years)Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon. - #6
Duncan Kennedy
#2196Overall Influence1942 - Present (82 years)Duncan Kennedy is a legal scholar and held the Carter Professorship of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School until 2015. Now emeritus, he is best known as one of the founders of the critical legal studies movement. - #7
Molefi Kete Asante
#1546Overall Influence1942 - Present (82 years)Molefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies. - #8
Robert Bernasconi
#4083Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years) - #9
Lewis Gordon
#8230Overall Influence1962 - Present (62 years)Lewis Ricardo Gordon is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. He has written particularly extensively on Africana and black existentialism, postcolonial phenomenology, race and racism, and on the works and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. His most recent book is titled: Fear of Black Consciousness. - #10
David Theo Goldberg
#7220Overall Influence1952 - Present (72 years) - #11
Judith Butler
#42Overall Influence1956 - Present (68 years) - #12
Anita L. Allen
#17090Overall Influence1953 - Present (71 years) - #13
Charles W. Mills
#7135Overall Influence1951 - 2021 (70 years) - #14
Mari Matsuda
#12995Overall Influence1956 - Present (68 years)Mari J. Matsuda is an American lawyer, activist, and law professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She was the first tenured female Asian American law professor in the United States, at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law in 1998 and one of the leading voices in critical race theory since its inception. Matsuda returned to Richardson in the fall of 2008. Prior to her return, Matsuda was a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, specializing in the fields of torts, constitutional law, legal his... - #15
Patricia J. Williams
#7046Overall Influence1951 - Present (73 years)Patricia J. Williams is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system. Early life Williams received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in 1972, and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1975. - #16
John Comaroff
#4540Overall Influence1945 - Present (79 years)John Comaroff is the Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, and Oppenheimer Research Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. Comaroff also serves as a research professor at the American Bar Foundation. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Cape Town and his doctorate from the London School of Economics.
Comaroff has held numerous influential teaching positions, includng the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago as well as positions at Duke University, Tel Aviv University, and University of Wales. He has been recognized an Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town since 2004. He has also held fellowships at the University of Manchester in the International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research and for the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin.
His research interests have included occult rituals, religious practices, culture, society, and law throughout Botswana and South Africa, where he was born and raised. Most recently, his research in South Africa focuses on crime and policing in the North West Province, the commodification of ethnic identity and cultural property among Tswana and San peoples, and the case of Khulekani Khumalo which examines the effects of imposture and personhood as a result of postcolonial social conditions.
- #17
Caroline Elkins
#15332Overall Influence1969 - Present (55 years)Caroline Elkins is Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Affiliated Professor at Harvard Law School, and the Founding Oppenheimer Faculty Director of Harvard’s Center for African Studies. - #18
Sally Haslanger
#9576Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years) - #19
Ulf Hannerz
#5202Overall Influence1942 - Present (82 years)Areas of Specialization: Urban and Media Anthropology
Ulf Hannerz is an emeritus professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University, which is where he also earned his Ph.D. As an anthropologist, he has focused his research on urban and media anthropology. His research has taken him to locations in the United States, the Caribbean, and West Africa.His current interests involve post-Cold War future facing scenarios with impacts on a global scale. He examines apocalyptic predictions as a product of culture and spread around the world by way of ubiquitous technology. He has written books such as World Watching: Streetcorners and Newsbeats on a Journey through Anthropology and Writing Future Worlds: An Anthropologist Explores Global Scenarios.
- #20
Manning Marable
#6557Overall Influence1950 - 2011 (61 years)William Manning Marable was an American professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable founded and directed the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. He wrote several texts and was active in numerous progressive political causes. - #21
Linda Martín Alcoff
#6700Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years) - #22
Gloria Ladson-Billings
#8198Overall Influence1947 - Present (77 years)Gloria Jean Ladson-Billings is an American pedagogical theorist and teacher educator known for her work in the fields of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory, and the pernicious effects of systemic racism and economic inequality on educational opportunities. Her book The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African-American Children is a significant text in the field of education. Ladson-Billings is Professor Emerita and formerly the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison... - #23
Jean Comaroff
#12363Overall Influence1946 - Present (78 years)Jean Comaroff is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. She is an expert on the effects of colonialism on people in Southern Africa. Until 2012, Jean was the Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. - #24
Toyin Falola
#7697Overall Influence1953 - Present (71 years)Toyin Omoyeni Falola is a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies. Falola is a Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria and of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, and has served as the president of the African Studies Association. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. - #25
Andrey Korotayev
#1439Overall Influence1961 - Present (63 years) - #26
Mustafa Emirbayer
#13342Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years) - #27
Howard Winant
#7088Overall Influence1946 - Present (78 years)Howard Winant is an American sociologist and race theorist. Winant is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Winant is best known for developing the theory of racial formation along with Michael Omi. Winant’s research and teachings revolve around race and racism, comparative historical sociology, political sociology, social theory, and human rights. - #28
Keith Hart
#14531Overall Influence1943 - Present (81 years)Keith Hart is a British anthropologist and writer living in Paris. His main research has focused on economic anthropology, Africa and the African diaspora, and money. He has taught at universities including East Anglia, Manchester, Yale and the Chicago, as well as at Cambridge University where he was director of the African Studies Centre. He contributed the concept of the informal economy to development studies and has published widely on economic anthropology. He is the author of The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World and Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes. His written work f... - #29
Hazel Carby
#14544Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years)Hazel Vivian Carby is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and of American Studies. She served as Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University. - #30
James H. Cone
#3058Overall Influence1938 - 2018 (80 years)James Hal Cone was an American theologian. He is best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of ... - #31
Georges Balandier
#5626Overall Influence1920 - 2016 (96 years)Georges Balandier was a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balandier was born in Aillevillers-et-Lyaumont. He was a professor at the Sorbonne , and is a member of the Center for African Studies , a research center of the École pratique des hautes études . He held for many years the Editorship of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie and edited the series Sociologie d’Aujourd’hui at Presses Universitaires de France. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1976. He died on 5 October 2016 at the age of 95. - #32
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
#21483Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years)Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is a Malawian historian, literary critic, novelist, short-story writer and blogger at The Zeleza Post. He was president of the African Studies Association. He was the Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Quinnipiac University. He served as Vice Chancellor of the United States International University Africa from 2016 to 2021, located in Nairobi, Kenya. He served as Associate Provost and North Star Distinguished Professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio from 2021 to 2023, and was appointed to his current position as Senior Advisor for Strategic Init... - #33
Richard Delgado
#8397Overall Influence1939 - Present (85 years)Richard Delgado is an American legal scholar considered to be one the founders of critical race theory, along with Derrick Bell. Delgado is currently a Distinguished Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. Previously, he was the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. He has written and co-authored numerous articles and books, many with his wife, Jean Stefancic. He is also notable for his scholarship on hate speech and for introducing storytelling into legal scholarship. - #34
George Yancy
#14783Overall Influence1961 - Present (63 years) - #35
Gary Peller
#14792Overall Influence1955 - Present (69 years)Gary Peller is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a prominent member of the critical legal studies and critical race theory movements. Education and early career Peller received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University in 1977 and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School where he served as a member of the Harvard Law Review. Peller then clerked for Morris Lasker, a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He is currently a member of the Maryland state bar. - #36
Ibram X. Kendi
#4844Overall Influence1982 - Present (42 years)Ibram Xolani Kendi is an American author, professor, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America. In July 2020, he founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University where he as director. Kendi was included in Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Kendi has attracted criticism for his comments on Amy Coney Barrett as well as for alleged financial mismanagement of the Center for Antiracist Research. - #37
Peter Gabel
#21316Overall Influence1947 - Present (77 years)Peter Gabel was an American law academic and associate editor of Tikkun, a bi-monthly Jewish critique of politics, culture, and society, He wrote a number of articles for the magazine on subjects ranging from the original intent of the framers of the Constitution to the creationism/evolution controversy . - #38
Shaun L. Gabbidon
#12956Overall Influence1967 - Present (57 years) - #39
Tina Fernandes Botts
#32268Overall InfluenceTina Fernandes Botts is an American legal scholar and philosophy professor currently teaching at the San Joaquin College of Law. She is known for her work in legal hermeneutics, intersectionality, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of race . Previous posts include Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College; Visiting Professor of Law at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law; Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fresno; Visiting Assistant Professor of philosophy at Oberlin College; Fellow in Law and Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and A... - #40
Janet E. Helms
#11709Overall Influence2000 - Present (24 years) - #41
Stephen Adebanji Akintoye
#13751Overall Influence1935 - Present (89 years)Stephen Adebanji Akintoye, also known as S. Banji Akintoye , is a Nigerian-born academic, historian and writer. He attended Christ’s School Ado Ekiti, Nigeria from 1951–1955, and studied history at the University College , Ibadan , and doctoral studies from 1963-1966 at the University of Ibadan, where he was awarded a PhD in History in 1966. He taught at the History Department at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he became a professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies from 1974-1977. He has also taught African History in universities in the United States includ... - #42
Michèle Lamont
#25587Overall Influence1957 - Present (67 years) - #43
Eddie Glaude
#36324Overall Influence1968 - Present (56 years)Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is an American academic, author, and current-affairs pundit. He is currently the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. He has previously been the chair of Princeton’s Center for African American Studies and the chair of its Department of African American Studies. He has authored five books, and edited or co-edited two others. He has published articles on U.S. media platforms such as Time and the Huffington Post. He is a contributor to the MSNBC cable news channel, and frequently appears as a commentator o... - #44
Matthew Barnett Robinson
#33763Overall Influence1970 - Present (54 years) - #45
Frieda Ekotto
#108159Overall Influence1959 - Present (65 years)Frieda Ekotto is a Francophone African woman novelist and literary critic. She is Professor of AfroAmerican and African Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan and is currently the Hunting Family Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities. She is best known for her novels, which focus on gender and sexuality in Sub-Saharan Africa, and her work on the writer Jean Genet, particular her political analysis of his prison writing, and his impact as a race theorist in the Francophone world. Her research and teaching focuses on literature, film, race and law in the Francophone... - #46
Raymond Winbush
#30232Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years)Raymond Arnold Winbush a.k.a. Tikari Bioko is an American scholar and activist known for his systems-thinking approaches to understanding the impact of racism/white supremacy on the global African community. He is currently Research Professor and Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. - #47
Paula D. McClain
#48885Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years)Paula Denice McClain , is a professor of political science, public policy, and African and African American Studies at Duke University and is a widely quoted expert on racism and race relations. Her research focuses primarily on racial minority-group politics and urban politics. She is co-director of Duke’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences, and director of the American Political Science Association’s Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, which is hosted by Duke and funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke. - #48
Jennifer Hochschild
#46375Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years) - #49
Valeria Sinclair-Chapman
#126191Overall Influence1969 - Present (55 years)Valeria Sinclair-Chapman is an American political scientist, currently a professor of political science and African-American studies at Purdue University. Sinclair-Chapman studies American political institutions, the representation of minority groups in the United States Congress, and minority political participation, particularly how excluded groups come to be included in American politics. - #50
Derrick Bell
#3837Overall Influence1930 - 2011 (81 years)Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. Bell worked for first the U.S. Justice Department, then the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he supervised over 300 school desegregation cases in Mississippi. - #51
Jacquelyn Grant
#30417Overall Influence1948 - Present (76 years)Jacquelyn Grant is an American theologian, a Methodist minister. Alongside Katie Cannon, Delores S. Williams, and Kelly Brown Douglas, Grant is considered one of the four founders of womanist theology. Womanist theology addresses theology from the viewpoint of Black women, reflecting on both their perspectives and experience in regards to faith and moral standards. Grant is currently the Callaway Professor of Systematic Theology at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. - #52
Kendall Thomas
#9434Overall InfluenceKendall Thomas is Nash Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, at Columbia Law School. Biography Kendall Thomas did his J.D. at Yale University’s Law School in 1983 after having obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Yale in 1978. - #53
Faye V. Harrison
#175496Overall Influence1951 - Present (73 years)Faye Harrison is a professor of African-American Studies and Anthropology and Faculty Affiliate for the Program on Women & Gender in Global Perspectives, the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies and the Center for African Studies, all for the University of Illinois. She earned her B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D from Stanford University.
Harrison’s research interests have taken her to Nigeria, South Africa, Japan, Jamaica, Denmark and many more countries. She has explored racism and human rights, gendered division of labor, gang politics and criminality, and feminism.
She has been honored many times for her contributions to the field of anthropology. She has received the Society for the Anthropology of North America Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America, the Distinguished Service Award from the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and the Presidential Award of the American Anthropological Association. She was chair for the Commission on the Anthropology of Women from 1993 to 2009 and president of the Association of Black Anthropologists from 1989 to 1991.
- #54
Dara Strolovitch
#133330Overall InfluenceDara Strolovitch is an American political scientist, currently Professor of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Political Science at Yale University. She studies the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the context of intersectional societal inequality, and the representation of those who are marginalized in multiple overlapping ways. - #55
Juana María Rodríguez
#127693Overall Influence1950 - Present (74 years)Juana María Rodríguez is a Cuban-American professor of Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly writing in queer theory, critical race theory, and performance studies highlights the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and embodiment in constructing subjectivity. - #56
Naomi Murakawa
#56197Overall Influence - #57
Nadia Brown
#154212Overall Influence - #58
Kim F. Hall
#125445Overall Influence1961 - Present (63 years)Kim F. Hall is the Lucyle Hook professor of English and professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College. She was born in 1961 in Baltimore. She is an expert on black feminist studies, critical race theory, early modern and Renaissance literature. - #59
Melville J. Herskovits
1895 - 1963 (68 years)Melville Jean Herskovits was an American anthropologist who helped to first establish African and African Diaspora studies in American academia. He is known for exploring the cultural continuity from African cultures as expressed in African-American communities. He worked with his wife Frances Herskovits, also an anthropologist, in the field in South America, the Caribbean and Africa. They jointly wrote several books and monographs. - #60
Andrea Abrams
#160229Overall InfluenceDr. Andrea Abrams is an American anthropologist, Associate Professor, President of the Association of Black Anthropologists and Author of God and Blackness: Race, Gender and Identity in a Middle Class Afrocentric Church. Andrea is currently an associate professor of Anthropology, Gender Studies and African American Studies at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, as well as the Chair of the Gender Studies Program. In 2018, she was named associate vice president for diversity affairs & special assistant to the president, and in 2021 was named vice president for diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Top Activists
We restricted our list of influencers above to those who hold or have held academic positions. The following are highly influential people outside of careers in academia. We’re open to adding to this list. Email us with suggestions.
Shaun King
Demico Boothe
Nikkita Oliver
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Photo Credits:
- Cornel West, by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Kwame Anthony Appiah, by David Shankbone - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, by Mohamed Badarne - Kimberlé CrenshawHeinrich-Böll-Stiftung from Berlin, Deutschland, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Patricia Hill Collins, by Valter Campanato/Agência Brasil - http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/cultura/foto/2014-07/festival-latinidades-palestra-territorios-negros, CC BY 3.0 br
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