Vinay Harpalani

Visiting Assistant Professor of Law

Professor Harpalani joined the IIT Chicago-Kent faculty in 2012 from Seattle University School of Law, where he was the inaugural academic fellow at the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality. During his two years at Seattle Law, he taught seminars in education and constitutional law and assisted with the Korematsu Center's advocacy efforts to promote social justice.  Prior to this position, Professor Harpalani served as the Derrick Bell Fellow at New York University School of Law, where he co-taught courses in constitutional law with the late Professor Derrick Bell.

Professor Harpalani's scholarship focuses on race, education and law, and employs a multidisciplinary lens, incorporating perspectives from developmental psychology and sociology. His most recent article, Diversity Within Racial Groups and the Constitutionality of Race Conscious Admissions, will be published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law in November 2012 and was cited in a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief for the case of Fisher v. Texas. Previously, Professor Harpalani has published in the New York University Law Review and Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy, and he has co-authored articles in the Journal of Social Issues, Educational Researcher, Development and Psychopathology, Black Arts Quarterly, and other scholarly journals. He has also authored and co-authored numerous book chapters and encyclopedia entries on race, education and developmental psychology. 

Professor Harpalani graduated from New York University (NYU) School of Law in 2009, where he served as an articles editor for the New York University Law Review, an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow, and a Derrick A. Bell Jr. Public Service Scholar.  At NYU Law, he won the Gary E. Moncrieffe Award for "outstanding student in Racism and Law" and received a Vanderbilt Medal for "outstanding contributions to the school of law." Prior to law school, Professor Harpalani earned Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in education and a Master of Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania, and he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Delaware with B.A. degrees in biological sciences and psychology.  Between finishing his Ph.D.  and starting law school, Professor Harpalani was a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.