Richard Rothstein

Although Richard Rothstein is now best-known for The Color of Law, during most of his lengthy career as a historian Rothstein focused on studying education policy and school segregation. He switched to studying housing discrimination in the 2000s and 2010s after realizing that American schools remain segregated principally because American neighborhoods are so segregated. Earlier in his career, Rothstein taught for several years at Columbia and Harvard Universities, in addition to writing a column on education issues for The New York Times from 1999 to 2002. Rothstein is affiliated with a number of universities, think tanks, and civil rights organizations, including the Economic Policy Institute, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law’s Othering & Belonging Institute (formerly the Haas Institute). He has also received an Honorary Doctorate from the Bank Street College of Education in 2015, and his son Jesse Rothstein is also a professor specializing in education issues.