Founded in 1996, The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) is an innovative think tank that connects academics, activists and policy-makers to promote efforts to dismantle structural inequality. We utilize new ideas and innovative perspectives to transform public discourse and policy. We promote frameworks and strategies that address a vision of racial justice that embraces the intersections of race, gender, class, and the array of barriers that disempower those who are marginalized in society. AAPF is dedicated to advancing and expanding racial justice, gender equality, and the indivisibility of all human rights, both in the U.S. and internationally.
Founded By
Kimberlé Crenshaw
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Kimberlé Crenshaw is the Co-founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum, and the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School. She is the Promise Institute Professor at UCLA Law School and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor at Columbia Law School.
She is popularly known for her development of “intersectionality,” “Critical Race Theory,” and the #SayHerName Campaign, and is the host of the podcast Intersectionality Matters!. She also is a columnist for The New Republic, and the moderator of the widely impactful webinar series Under The Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that the Twin Pandemics Lay Bare. She is one of the most cited scholars in legal history and has been recognized as Ms. magazine’s “No. 1 Most Inspiring Feminist;” one of Prospect Magazine’s ten most important thinkers in the world; and even listed in Ebony’s “Power 100″ issue.
Dr. Luke Charles Harris
Co-Founder & Deputy Director
Dr. Luke Charles Harris is a former Chair of the Department of Political Science at Vassar College, 2002-2005, and the Co-founder and Deputy Director of the African American Policy Forum. He teaches American Politics, Black Feminist Legal Theory, Constitutional Interpretation and Critical Race Theory. An expert in the field of Critical Race Theory, Harris has authored a series of influential articles on questions of racial and gender equality in the U.S.
Recently, he completed Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines, a co-authored edited volume released for publication in March 2019 by the University of California Press (Editors: Kimberlé Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz). Currently Luke is working on two book projects: Notes from A Child of Apartheid: The Meaning of Equality in Post-Apartheid America, and The Race Track: Understanding and Challenging Structural Racism, co-authored with Kimberlé Crenshaw and George Lipsitz.