Dorothy Roberts, a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor, has been named a 2024 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Roberts is the George A. Weiss Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and professor of Africana studies. She is also the founding director of the Program on Race, Science and Society. Roberts has appointments in the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the School of Arts & Sciences.
“The transformative scholarship of Dorothy Roberts focuses on some of the most pressing issues facing our society, addressing issues of inequality, social justice, and race,” says Interim President J. Larry Jameson. “As a scholar, award-winning author, and now MacArthur Fellow, she exemplifies Penn’s commitment to impactful, interdisciplinary, creative pursuits.”
The Fellowship is designed to provide recipients with the flexibility to pursue their own artistic, intellectual, and professional activities in the absence of specific obligations or reporting requirements. Fellows are nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and are considered by an anonymous selection committee.
Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems. Her work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for a wholesale transformation of existing systems.
“I am extremely honored to receive a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship,” says Roberts. “It is my hope this award will shine a light on Black women’s visions and struggles for reproductive and family justice.”
Roberts’ major books include “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty” (Pantheon, 1997); “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare” (Basic Books, 2001); “Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century” (The New Press, 2011); and “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World” (Basic Books, 2022), as well as more than 100 scholarly articles and essays in books and journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story.
Her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Harvard Program in Ethics & the Professions, Stanford Center for the Comparative Study of Race & Ethnicity, Northwestern Institute for Policy Research, and the Fulbright Program. Recent recognitions of her work include elections to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and National Academy of Medicine. She holds an honorary doctor of law degree from Rutgers University, an honorary doctor of science degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and received the Society of Family Planning Lifetime Achievement Award, and an American Psychiatric Association Solomon Carter Fuller Award.
Read more at Penn Carey Law and Penn Arts & Sciences.
