2022 Ambassador Alumna
Cottage: Awaiting Residency
BIO: Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar and author of The New York Times bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Jim Crow helped to spark a national debate about the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States and inspired racial justice organizing and advocacy efforts nationwide. Numerous commentators have dubbed The New Jim Crow “the bible of a social movement,” and the book has become a staple of university curriculums, advocacy trainings, reading groups, and faith-based study circles. Alexander has been featured on national radio and television media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Bill Moyers Journal, the Tavis Smiley Show, MSNBC, C-Span, and Democracy Now! She has also written for numerous publications including, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and The Huffington Post. Alexander has served as a professor at several universities, including Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics, and The Ohio State University where she held a joint appointment with the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Alexander served as a Soros Justice Fellow in 2005 and was appointed a Senior Fellow for the Ford Foundation in 2015. Currently, Alexander is a Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City where she is exploring the moral and spiritual dimensions of mass incarceration.