Civil rights advocate and UCLA professor Kimberlé Crenshaw will speak in Paterno Library on Thursday, February 15 as part of the Barbara Jordan Lecture Series. Crenshaw’s talk on intersectionality in daily life will begin at 6 p.m. in Paterno’s Foster Auditorium.

Crenshaw is known for the development of intersectional theory and for coining the term “intersectionality,” which she described in a 2016 TED Talk as a way “to deal with the fact that many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice.”

The Canton, Ohio, native earned her degrees in government and Africana studies from Cornell University and later earned a law degree from Harvard. Crenshaw is considered a leading scholar in critical race theory and was also recognized as 2015’s “No.1 Most Inspiring Feminist” by Ms. Magazine. 

The talk, titled “Intersectionality 101: Race & Gender in Work, Life & Politics,” is sponsored by Penn State’s Africana Research Center.