Biography

An expert on civil rights and anti-discrimination law, Richard Thompson Ford (BA ’88) has distinguished himself as an insightful voice and compelling writer on questions of race and multiculturalism. His scholarship combines social criticism and legal analysis and he writes for both popular readers and for academic and legal specialists. His work has focused on the social and legal conflicts surrounding claims of discrimination, on the causes and effects of racial segregation, and on the use of territorial boundaries as instruments of social regulation. Methodologically, his work is at the intersection of critical theory and the law.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1994, Professor Ford was a Reginald F. Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School, a litigation associate with Morrison & Foerster, and a housing policy consultant for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has also been a Commissioner of the San Francisco Housing Authority. He has written for the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and for Slate, where he is a regular contributor. His latest book is The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse.

Key Works

• Richard Thompson Ford, The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse , New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, January 2008.
• Richard Thompson Ford, Racial Culture: A Critique, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
• Richard Thompson Ford, Brown's Ghost, 117 Harvard Law Review 1305-1333 (March 2004).
• Richard Thompson Ford, Law's Territory (A History of Jurisdiction), 97 Michigan Law Review 843-930 (1999).
• Richard Thompson Ford, The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis, 107 Harvard Law Review 1841-1921 (1994).

In the News

• Stanford Law Prof Is One Of Esquire’s Best-Dressed Real Men
  ABA Journal, June 04, 2009
• Swing And A Miss
  MSNBC - The Rachel Maddow Show, May 29, 2009

Courses & Programs

Courses

• Critical Theory
• Employment Discrimination
• Local Government Law
• Local Initiatives

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• Richard Thompson Ford, Bad Test: Why Sotomayor Rejected the New Haven Firefighters' Claim , Slate.com, May 27, 2009.
• Richard Thompson Ford, The End of Civil Rights, The Boston Globe, May 17, 2009.
• Richard Thompson Ford, Why the Poor Stay Poor (Book review: More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City, by William Julius Wilson), New York Times, March 8, 2009, pg. BR8.
• Richard Thompson Ford, One Nation, After All: How Obama is Changing Racial Politics in America (Book review: Jabari Asim, What Obama Means: For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future, The Washington Post, January 18, 2009, pg. BW03. Also published as Trying to Interpret the Obama Phenomenon: Fact-paced Analysis Keeps Reader Engaged, Concord Monitor, January 25, 2009.
• Richard Thompson Ford, Blackballed: Why are There So Few Black Coaches in College Football? Slate.com, December 26, 2008.
• Richard Thompson Ford, Analogy Lesson: Racism is the Wrong Frame for Understanding the Passage of California's Same-sex Marriage Ban, Slate.com, November 14, 2008.
• Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Joanna Mountain, Barbara Koenig, Russ Altman, Melissa Brown, Albert Camarillo, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Mildred Cho, Jennifer Eberhardt, Marcus Feldman, Richard Ford, Henry Greely, Roy King, Hazel Markus, Debra Satz, Matthew Snipp, Claude Steele and Peter Underhill, Open Letter - The Ethics of Characterizing Difference: Guiding Principles on using Racial Categories in Human Genetics, 9 Genome Biology art. 404 (July 2008).
• Richard Ford, Democrats for McCain: Racists? (Convictions: Slate's Blog on Legal Issues), Slate.com, June 11, 2008.
• Richard Ford, Hills, Orwell, and Intellectuals (Convictions: Slate's Blog on Legal Issues), Slate.com, June 7, 2008.
• Richard Ford, In Defense of Intellectuals (Convictions: Slate's Blog on Legal Issues), Slate.com, June 4, 2008.

Affiliations & Honors

Professional Affiliations

• Member, Directing Committee of the Modern Thought and Literature Program
• Member, Urban Studies Faculty