Dorothy E. Roberts was named the newest Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The PIK professor program recruits faculty whose work spans across several disciplines. According to Rebecca Bushnell, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn, the ideal candidate for a PIK professorship is “a professor of great distinction whose teaching and research crosses disciplinary boundaries, and whose work has an impact on the world at large.” She will be the fifth woman, second African American and the 14th overall scholar named to a PIK professorship at Penn.
For the past 14 years, Professor Roberts has been on the faculty at Northwestern University School of Law. She previously taught at the Rutgers University School of Law. Her research is focused on issues related to race, gender, and the law. She is the author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century (The New Press, 2011).
Professor Roberts is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University and earned her law degree at Harvard Law School.