Rachel F. Moran was the inaugural William H. Neukom Fellows Research Chair in Diversity and Law and the Co-Director of “The Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Mobility” with Robert L. Nelson. Moran is also Dean Emerita and Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. Moran was appointed dean of UCLA Law School in 2010.  Prior to her tenure at UCLA, Professor Moran was the Robert D. and Leslie-Kay Raven Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law. From July 2008 to June 2010, Moran served as a founding faculty member of the UC Irvine Law School. Moran received her A.B. in Psychology with Honors and with Distinction from Stanford University in 1978, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa her junior year. She obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1981, where she was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal.  Some of her recent scholarship includes: Educational Policy and the Law (with Mark G. Yudof, Betsy Levin, James E. Ryan and Kristi L. Bowman) (5th ed. Cengage 2012); Race Law Stories (with Devon Carbado, Foundation Press, 2008); Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance (University of Chicago Press, 2001); “A New Twist on the One Best System: Structured English Immersion Initiatives, Equal Opportunity, and Freedom to Learn,” in The Miseducation of English Learners: A Tale of Three States and Lessons to be Learned (edited by Grace P. McField, Information Age Publishing, 2014); “Youth Civic Development and Education: A Consensus Report on a Conference,” (co-authored),” Stanford Center on Adolescence (2013); and “What Counts as Knowledge?: A Reflection on Race, Social Science, and the Law,” 44 Law and Society Review 515 (2010).

Robert L. Nelson is the Director Emeritus of the American Bar Foundation, the MacCrate Research Chair in the Legal Profession at the ABF, and professor of sociology and law at Northwestern University.  He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. in sociology, both from Northwestern, and has held several positions of academic leadership throughout his career.  He is a leading scholar in the fields of the legal profession and discrimination law.  He has authored or edited eight books and numerous articles, including Legalizing Gender Inequality, which won the prize for best book in sociology in 2001, and Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar, co-authored with John Heinz, Edward Laumann, and Rebecca Sandefur, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005. His current research includes After the JD, a national study of the careers of lawyers, which is tracking the entering bar class of 2000 for the first 12 years of their careers (with several collaborators); the Changing Dynamics of Employment Discrimination project, which examines a large national sample of federal court filings between 1988 to present and has interviewed parties and their lawyers about their experiences in these cases (with Laura Beth Nielsen and Ellen Berrey); and the Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Mobility (with Rachel Moran). He is co-director of the ABF’s Research Group on Legal Diversity.