Lani Guinier is a legal scholar and former civil rights lawyer who specializes in voting rights law, democratic theory and practice, educational access and pedagogy, law and social movements, and issues of race, gender, class and social change. A graduate of Radcliffe College (Harvard University) and Yale Law School, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years before becoming the first woman of color appointed as a tenured Professor at Harvard Law School in 1998. From 1977 to 1981 she worked in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and in the 1980s directed the voting rights project at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She has authored and co-authored numerous articles and five books: including The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy, Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice; Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change (with Michelle Fine and Jane Balin), Who's Qualified (with Susan Sturm) and The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (with Gerald Torres). Professor Guinier has received many honors and awards for her teaching, writing, and public service and is the recipient of eleven honorary degrees.