A major component of antiracism and inclusivity efforts requires that all of us adequately cite and incorporate historically excluded scholars and scholarship. Women scholars and scholars of color are disproportionately absent from course syllabi (at undergraduate and graduate levels) as well as from top journals.
Evaluate your syllabi and manuscript references
Dr. Jane Sumner developed a Gender Balance Assessment Tool, available on her website here: https://jlsumner.shinyapps.io/syllabustool/
Citation:
Sumner, Jane Lawrence. ‘The Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT): a web-based tool for estimating gender balance in syllabi and bibliographies.’ PS: Political Science & Politics 51, no. 2 (2018): 396-400.
Additional Resources:
Dion, M., & Mitchell, S. (2020). How Many Citations to Women Is “Enough”? Estimates of Gender Representation in Political Science. PS: Political Science & Politics, 53(1), 107-113. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/26/heres-what-we-can-do-about-gender-gap-political-science-journals/)
McClain, Paula D., Ayee, Gloria Y. A., Means, Taneisha N., Reyes-Barrientez, Alicia M., and Sediqe, Nura A.. 2016. “Race, Power, and Knowledge: Tracing the Roots of Exclusion in the Development of Political Science in the United States.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 4 (3): 467–82.
Blatt, Jessica. 2018. Race and the Making of American Political Science. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Liu, L., Devine, C., & Gauder, H. (2020). The Gender Citation Gap in Undergraduate Student Research: Evidence from the Political Science Classroom. PS: Political Science & Politics, 53(4), 729-733.
Smith, A., Hardt, H., Meister, P., & Kim, H. (2020). Gender, Race, Age, and National Origin Predict Whether Faculty Assign Female-Authored Readings in Graduate Syllabi. PS: Political Science & Politics,53(1), 100-106.
Identify and integrate more scholars and scholarship
Women Also Know Stuff: https://womenalsoknowstuff.com
Women Also Know Law: https://womenalsoknowlaw.com
POC Also Know Stuff: https://sites.google.com/view/pocexperts/home
Institute for African Women in Law: https://www.africanwomeninlaw.com/ourpeople
Cite Black Women: https://www.citeblackwomencollective.org/
People to Cite: Law and Courts Scholars
(a non-exhaustive list)
Angelique M. Davis is a Professor of Political Science and African and African American Studies at Seattle University. Her research concentrates on racial gaslighting, apologies and reparations, the socio-legal construction of race, the political representation of nonwhite Americans, and the reinvention of white supremacy in the twenty-first century. She received her Juris Doctor from the University of Washington in 1999. She served as a federal law clerk and subsequently practiced law until she joined the faculty at Seattle University in 2005. In addition to her academic pursuits, Professor Davis serves as a Commissioner on the Seattle Civil Service Commission, owns Exhale Academic Writing Retreats, and is a coach and campus workshop facilitator for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD).
Website: https://angeliquemdavis.com, https://angeliquedavis1.academia.edu
Email: angelique@angeliquemdavis.com; adavis@seattleu.edu
Dr. Alice J. Kang is joint appointed to the Department of Political Science and the Institute for Ethnic Studies (African and African American Studies Program) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on women, gender, and politics with a world regional focus on Africa. Specifically, she investigates the role of women’s movements and conservative movements in making women’s rights policy in Niger and traces the rise of women judges on high courts globally. She also examines the effects of external threats on gender bias, women legislative representation, and litigation on women’s rights. Dr. Kang teaches courses on African politics, democracy and citizenship, and women and politics. She received her B.A. from Brown University and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Gbemende Johnson is an Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College. Her research interests are American institutions, judicial politics, and executive branch politics. She also studies race and politics and political theory. Johnson is currently working on research supported by the National Science Foundation that examines Freedom of Information Act Litigation in federal courts. Dr. Johnson was also awarded a Pracademic Fellowship in 2018 from the American Political Science Association. Previously, she received a grant from Rutgers’ University Center on the American Governor to examine state supreme court deference to executive power. Johnson received her doctorate in political science from Vanderbilt University in 2012.
Website: http://www.gbemendejohnson.com; https://www.hamilton.edu/academics/our-faculty/directory/faculty-detail/gbemende-johnson
Email: gxjohnso@hamilton.edu
Dr. Taneisha N. Means is an Assistant Professor of Political Science on the Class of 1951 Chair at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her research and teaching interests are in Racial and Ethnic Politics, Judicial Politics, and American Political Behavior and Identities. She combines both qualitative and quantitative methods to answer research questions at the intersection of race and judicial politics. Her current research projects examine the political identities and behaviors of 21st century black US judges.
Dr. J. Jarpa Dawuni is Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University, Washington D.C. She is a qualified Barrister-at-Law before the Ghana Superior Courts of Judicature. She holds a Doctorate in Political Science from Georgia State University. Her primary areas of research include judicial politics, women in the legal professions, gender and the law, international human rights, women’s civil society organizing, and democratization. In 2018 she was a Fulbright Specialist Scholar to Ghana where she designed a Center for Research in African Union Law. In 2016, she was awarded the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship to undertake a project on graduate student mentoring and research at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana. She is the Founding Director of the Howard University Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership.
Email: josephine.dawuni@howard.edu
Dr. Tao L. Dumas is an Associate Professor of Political Science at The College of New Jersey. She was born in Dallas and raised in Southeast Texas and received her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. Dr. Dumas teaches courses in constitutional law, civil rights and liberties, law and society, moot court, and judicial politics. Her research primarily focuses on the role of institutions and contextual factors in shaping litigation outcomes in U.S. state trial and appellate courts. Dr. Dumas is currently working on projects exploring the role of lawyers in settlement and litigation processes and research investigating the influence of judicial selection method on the behavior of trial court judges. Dr. Dumas is also a Pre-Law Advisor.
Dr. Allison P. Harris is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Research Fellow at the Institution of Social and Policy Studies. She conducts research in American politics with a specialization in law and courts. Her current research agenda investigates the ways in which institutional change affects disparities in institutional outcomes, specifically within the criminal legal system. Prior to joining the faculty at Yale, Dr. Harris was an Assistant Professor at the Pennsylvania State University (2017-2019) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University (2016-2017).
Email: allison.harris@yale.edu
Dr. Bianca Easterly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lamar University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Houston, and BA and Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before her doctoral studies, Dr. Easterly spent several years working in both the private and public sectors including the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Service. Dr. Easterly’s interests include American and state institutions and politics, public policy, federalism and intergovernmental relations, and judicial process and behavior. Her research broadly explores morality policies and the political institutions that enhance elite responsiveness to public opinion.
Email: bianca.easterly@lamar.edu
Dr. Susan Achury is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Lycoming College. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Houston in Spring 2019. She specializes in judicial politics in the United States and Latin America and comparative political institutions. Her research focuses on the institutional features of judicial review and how they affect democratic accountability. In particular, she is interested in accessibility, barriers of non-justiciability, and internal courts’ voting rules in constitutional justice and how they affect the role of courts in democracies. She also evaluates gender and racial representation in the US judiciary and intra-parties and electoral rules comparatively.
Email: achury@lycoming.edu
Dr. Traci Burch holds appointments as Associate Professor in Political Science at Northwestern University and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. Her areas of research focus include U.S. politics, political behavior and inequality, race and ethnic politics, social policy, and criminal justice. Her current research examines the effects of criminal convictions and incarceration on individual and neighborhood voter participation; changes in racial categorization as a result of intermarriage and immigration; and interest group participation in the Supreme Court.
Email: t-burch@northwestern.edu
Dr. Shenita Brazelton is a licensed attorney and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tuskegee University located in Tuskegee, Alabama. She currently serves as book review editor of the National Review of Black Politics (University of California Press), a publication of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Her research interests include examining decision making in federal appellate courts with an emphasis on issues pertaining to race and diversity within the judiciary. She earned a BA from Tuskegee University in political science, a JD from Vanderbilt University Law School, and a PhD in political science from Georgia State University.
Email: sbrazelton1@gsu.edu
Dr. Melina Juárez Pérez earned her PhD in Political Science at the University of New Mexico in 2018. She joined Western Washington University in the fall of 2019 with a dual appointment in the Department of Political Science & Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program. Her work focuses on the intersections of class, gender, race, & sexuality & their role in shaping the lived experiences, health, & happiness of Latinx & queer people of color. Her current research agenda centers on crimmigration—or the confluence of immigration & criminal justice systems. This includes investigating its theoretical & institutional boundaries & its political, emotional, and biological manifestations. In addition, her work also seeks to expand the use of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) & critical pedagogies in the social sciences.
Anna O. Law
Dr. Anna Law is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn College. She specializes in public law (including U.S. constitutional law, federal courts, legal institutions such as the American jury system) and U.S. immigration policy history. Specifically, she examines legal institutions like the federal courts as one institution sharing power with Congress and the Presidency, and she treats legal outcomes not just as products of doctrinal development, but also political contestation. Because her training is interdisciplinary and included law, political science, and American studies, she integrates disciplinary approaches She often incorporates historical institutionalism as an analytical approach, meaning that her research is temporally sensitive, where why something happened is explained best by when it happened—and what else was happening at the same time in the rest of U.S. history.
Dr. Tauheeda Yasin Martin is a Professor of ESL/English, Religion, and Humanities at Northern Virginia Community College. Her research examines how legal system debt acts as a regressive form of taxation, keeping the nation’s poorest under cyclical justice system supervision. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work intersects methods in the digital humanities, anthropology, interpretive sociology, American and Cultural Studies She holds an MS degree in Education (TESOL) from Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, an MA in Religion – Islamic Studies from the University of Wales, Trinity St. David in the U.K., and a BA in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY.