Prof. Renee Nicole Allen
Associate Professor of Legal Writing Faculty Director, Center for Race and Law
Professor Renee Nicole Allen is the co-recipient of the 2024 ALWD Diversity Award. Prof. Allen is an Associate Professor of Legal Writing and Faculty Director of the Center for Race & the Law at St. John’s University School of Law.
The Diversity Award honors individuals who have made significant accomplishments in the area of DEI or has demonstrated a strong commitment to promoting DEI, including efforts to improve the status of historically underrepresented groups. ALWD created this award in furtherance of its continued commitment to contributing to a legal writing discipline that is equitable and inclusive. The meaningful inclusion of diverse voices and experiences is necessary for ALWD to succeed in its mission of improving legal education and the analytic, reasoning, and writing abilities of lawyers.
Prof. Allen’s compelling nomination notes that her teaching, scholarship, and service all coalesce around DEI. While teaching several legal writing courses, Renee has developed and teaches two advanced courses: Race and the Law; and The Movement: Race, Rhythm, and Social Justice. Further, she is the founding director of St. John’s Center for Race and Law. Under Prof. Allen’s pioneering leadership, the Center has organized in just two years two major scholarly events: the Center’s inaugural symposium, “Racialized Notions of Professionalism and the Law,” and a two-day “Rest as Resistance” retreat that explored the book of the same name.
Prof. Allen’s scholarship, which focuses on race, social justice, and legal education, is equally impressive. Her articles, “Get out: Structural Racism and Academic Terror”[1] and “From Academic Freedom to Cancel Culture: Silencing Black Women in the Legal Academy”[2] call for a shift from outdated, yet deeply embedded, academic norms to ones that create positive experiences for Black women and individuals from historically excluded communities. Her most recent article, “Legal Academia’s White Gaze,”[3] calls out the persistent centering of Whiteness in legal scholarship, including (and especially) when it is about race and antiracism. Prof. Allen’s nominations noted that her scholarship pointedly asks the tough questions of institutions that portend to be making strides in DEI.
Prof. Allen is in demand as an invited speaker at numerous law schools and national conferences, where she has shared her compelling scholarship. She is also the creator and host of the “Law Professors are People, Too” podcast, which offers law professors the opportunity to discuss the intersections of their personal identities and professional roles. Prior to joining St. John’s faculty, Prof. Allen held positions in academic success and bar prep at several law schools. She is a member of the Legal Writing Institute (LWI) and Writing as Resistance (W.A.R.), a legal writing professors of color collective that supports diverse legal writing faculty in the academy.
[1] 29 WM. & MARY J. RACE, GENDER & SOC. JUST. 599 (2023).
[2] 68 UCLA L. Rev. 364 (2021).
[3] 109 MINN. L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2024).
