Leadership
Thought Leader & Our Founder, Professor Greene
The daughter of American civil rights activists, Professor Doris “Wendy” Greene is a trailblazing anti-discrimination law scholar, teacher, and advocate who has devoted her professional life’s work to advancing, racial, color, and gender equality in workplaces and beyond.
The first African-American woman tenured law professor at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law (Philadelphia, PA), Professor Greene, through her legal scholarship and public advocacy, has generated historic civil rights protections for victims of discrimination in workplaces, schools, public accommodations, and housing. Teen Vogue, Now This News, and BBC World News have celebrated Professor Greene for her pioneering scholarly activism that combats “grooming codes discrimination” and more specifically, the systematic discrimination African descendants suffer when donning natural hairstyles like afros, twists, braids, and locs. Between serving as a legal advisor and expert for civil rights cases challenging natural hair discrimination, co-drafting federal and state C.R.O.W.N. Acts, testifying in support of this legislation throughout the country, and publishing seminal legal scholarship used by lawyers and lawmakers, Professor Greene’s work has informed, to date, every legal pronouncement in the U.S.—on municipal, state, and federal levels—that natural hair discrimination is unlawful race discrimination.
As one of the world’s leading legal experts on this global civil rights issue, Professor Greene frequently provides legal commentary to international media outlets such as The Washington Post and the BBC News, and she is the author of a forthcoming book, #FreeTheHair: Locking Black Hair to Civil Rights Movements, under contract with the University of California, Berkeley Press.
As a leading expert in this cutting-edge area of law, over the past 12 years, Professor Greene’s published work has been instrumental to groundbreaking legislation, legal enforcement guidance and legal decisions.
Milestones
Legal expert for California's Creating Respectful and Open Workplaces for Natural Hair Act (C.R.O.W.N. Act) signed into law on July 3, 2019
Legal Expert, Drafted and submitted an expert declaration on behalf of African American male students seeking a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a high school grooming policy prohibiting them from wearing locs in Arnold v. Barbers Hill Independent School District, Civil Action No. 4:20-CV-1802 (May 2020)
Co-drafter and Legal Advisor, South Carolina House Bill 4692 introduced in January 2020 which clarifies the definition of race, national origin, and color for the purposes of S.C. statutes prohibiting racial discrimination in workplaces, schools, and public accommodations
Legal Expert and Expert Witness, California's Creating Respectful and Open Workplaces for Natural Hair Act (C.R.O.W.N. Act) signed into law on July 3, 2019
Legal publications shaped the New York City Commission on Human Rights groundbreaking enforcement guidance issued in February 2019 prohibiting natural hair discrimination in public and private schools, workplaces and public accommodations (which also serves as the primary justification for the NY State C.R.O.W.N. Act signed into law July 2019)
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s employed her legal arguments in a seminal natural hair discrimination case arising under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act: EEOC v. Catastrophe Management Solutions, Incorporated (2017)
Her published legal definition of race to be employed in anti-discrimination laws was adopted by the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, the C.R.O.W.N Acts of California and New York, and pending state laws in Kentucky, Michigan, and New Jersey as well quoted by the 11th Circuit of Appeals as a legal authority on the social construction of race
