Derrick Bell 荣获yl34511线路中心大学 2026 年 MLK 人道主义奖

The late Derrick Bell, an influential full-time visiting professor of constitutional law at 永利yl23411 for two decades, has been named a posthumous recipient of the 2026 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award by NYU. Each year, the MLK Humanitarian Award is conferred to a humanitarian within the NYU community who embodies and exemplifies the characteristics championed by King—“a vision of peace, persistence in purpose, and inspirational action.” On February 5, the prize will be accepted on Bell’s behalf by social-justice activist and scholar Janet Dewart Bell, his wife, during MLK Week at NYU, which commemorates King’s 1961 visit to the University’s former Bronx campus.

作为一名律师、民权活动家和法律学者，贝尔是一位开创性的人物。在职业生涯早期，他曾在美国司法部民权部门工作，是数千名律师中唯一的非裔美国人。 He left when the government asked him to resign his membership of the NAACP, and then went on to become first assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) under Thurgood Marshall, supervising more than 300 school desegregation cases in Mississippi. After entering academia, Bell wrote extensively about the progress of racial reform in the United States across a range of genres, from fiction to legal analysis to autobiography. His writings, arguing that racism is deeply entrenched within the nation’s laws and institutions, helped form the critical race theory movement in the 1970s, and shaped public policy and debate. Among his books are the widely used casebook种族、种族主义和美国法律and collections of short stories and fables that explored issues of racism, including井底的面孔和And We Are Not Saved.

贝尔的遗产，其中包括指导一代又一代法学院学生，yl34511线路中心大学法学院每年都会举办关于美国社会种族问题的德里克·贝尔讲座，以纪念贝尔的遗产。该系列讲座将于 2025 年迎来第 30 周年，邀请顶尖学者和专家来到法学院探讨广泛的当代种族问题。 Past presenters of the lecture have included Sherrilyn Iffil ’87, former president and director-counsel of LDF; Michelle Alexander, author ofThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; and Bell himself. 

“Yes, Derrick rocked the boat,” said John Sexton, then-president of NYU and dean emeritus of 永利yl23411, during Bell’s 2011 memorial service. “他还摇动了这棵树，结出了非凡的学术成果，滋养了法律纪律和成千上万的同事、学生和朋友，他激励他们互相教授法律，并站起来，大声疾呼，并在伸张正义的界限中找到快乐和满足。”