2026-27 Hess Scholar-in-Residence
The Wolfe Institute is pleased to host Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law Tanya Katerí Hernández as the 2026-27 Hess Scholar-in-Residence.
Tanya Katerí Hernández
Tanya Katerí Hernández is no stranger to Brooklyn College. In March 2024, she participated on a panel on “Anti-Blackness and Myths of Racial Mixing and Mestizaje” with Professor Jasmine Mitchell and our then Hess Scholar Professor Paul Ortiz. And in October 2024 she delivered The Samuel J. Konefsky Memorial Lecture. On that occasion she spoke on “Understanding Latinx Anti-Blackness Through the Lens of Equality Law”. The Wolfe Institute will be hosting events throughout the academic year to re-introduce her work to our campus community in anticipation of her residency during the week of March 22, 2027.
Biography
Tanya Katerí Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. She received her A.B. from Brown University, and her J.D. from Yale Law School.
Professor Hernández is an internationally recognized comparative race law expert and Fulbright Scholar who has visited at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, in Paris and the University of the West Indies Law School, in Trinidad.
She has previously served as a Law and Public Policy Affairs Fellow at Princeton University, a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University; a Faculty Fellow at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and as a Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Hernández is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y Legislación. Hispanic Business Magazine selected her as one of its annual 100 Most Influential Hispanics and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander awarded her a Commendation for “extraordinary contributions to anti-racism.”
Hernández serves on the editorial boards of the Revista Brasileira de Direito e Justiça/Brazilian Journal of Law and Justice, and the Latino Studies Journal published by Palgrave-Macmillian Press.
Her books include: Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response (including Spanish and Portuguese translation editions); Brill Research Perspectives in Comparative Law; Racial Discrimination, Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination; and Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and The Struggle for Equality, along with its Spanish translation edition, Inocencia Racial: Desenmascarando la antinegritud de los latinos y la lucha por la igualdad. Her next book, The Global Erasure of Blackness: The Civil Rights Crisis of Census (Under) Counting, will be released April 6, 2027.