"Tyranny and Community, from Shadrach Minkins to Kilmar Ábrego García" 

February 25, 2027 | 12:15-1:45 pm | Knight Law Center | Gleaves Auditorium, Rm 110

Register for Derrick Bell Lecture

Paul Gowder, Frederic P. Vose Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law 

Paul Gowder is the Frederic P. Vose Professor of Law at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law. He is the author of three books: The Rule of Law in the Real World (Cambridge, 2016), The Rule of Law in the United States: An Unfinished Project of Black Liberation (Hart/Bloomsbury 2021), and The Networked  Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms (Cambridge 2023). His research spans fields including political and  legal philosophy, racial justice, constitutional theory, platform governance, and classical Athenian law.  Gowder's affiliations, past and present, include service as a member of the Global Rule of Law  Commission of the European Public Law Organization, a member (2014-5) of the School of Social Science of the Institute for Advanced Study, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and a founding fellow and former board member (founding to 2024) of the Integrity Institute. Formerly, he was a legal aid and civil rights lawyer, and in those contexts represented victims of police misconduct, predatory lending, employment discrimination, unlawful eviction, domestic violence, and numerous other injustices. 

About the 2027 Lecture

In 1851, the fugitive Shadrach Minkins was rescued from the clutches of the Slave Power by an armed and Black-led vigilance committee in a Boston courthouse. After the rescue, there was a little-known debate in the Senate between Henry Clay and John Parker Hale, the latter an oddly under-recognized abolitionist from New Hampshire who also represented Minkins's rescuers in their subsequent trials.  While Clay fulminated about the effrontery of Black efforts to resist enslaver tyranny, Hale vividly reminded the nation about what happened every time an external oppressor tried to enforce in Boston laws that were hateful to the people. Today, the Fugitive Slave Act has transformed itself into mass deportation. Today, too, members of targeted communities and their allies and friends have developed grassroots strategies of resistance to the forces of tyranny. We will unpack the lessons for today's activists from the rescue of Minkins and the insights of Hale. 

Who was Derrick Bell?

A national thought leader on civil rights and the understanding of racism and American law, Derrick Bell was a historic choice as Oregon Law’s first Black dean. Bell served as dean from 1981-85, resigning in protest of the school’s decision to not offer a faculty position to an Asian American woman. Prior to his time at Oregon Law, Bell published the original casebook for teaching race-related law courses, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” which is now a standard textbook in US law schools. 

Oregon Law hosted the first Derrick Bell Lecture in 2013 to showcase scholars working in the areas of civil rights and race in the law, in legal education, and in the legal profession. In 2017, the Derrick Bell Lecture became part of the UO African American Workshop and Lecture Series, sponsored by the Division of Equity and Inclusion and the Office of the President.  

Bell is considered one of the most influential voices in the foundation of Critical Race Theory, a framework that examines society and culture as they connect to race, law, and power. 

The Derrick Bell Lecture is sponsored by the University of Oregon Division of Equity and Inclusion and is part of the annual African American Workshop and Lecture Series.