Kenji Yoshino

Kenji Yoshino

Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law and Director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, NYU School of Law

Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law. He is an East Coast native, now living in NYC with his husband and two children. Yoshino studied at Harvard, Oxford, and Yale Law Schools. His fields are constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, and law and literature. He has received several distinctions for his teaching and research, including the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award in 2016, an honorary degree from Pomona College in 2018, and the Peck Medal in Jurisprudence in 2021.

Yoshino is the author of three books and has published in major academic journals, including The Harvard Law Review, The Stanford Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal. He has also written for Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In 2011, he was elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers for a six-year term. He also serves on the board of the Brennan Center for Justice, advisory boards for diversity and inclusion at Charter Communications and Morgan Stanley, and on the board of his children’s school. In addition to teaching at NYU School of Law, Yoshino is also the faculty director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Together with the executive director, David Glasgow, he is writing a book focused on how to have diversity conversations to be published by Simon & Schuster next year.

4 min
Kenji Yoshino on a Pivotal Identity Moment in His Career
To what extent are you "yourself" at work? Renowned legal scholar Kenji Yoshino studies the phenomenon of "covering."
7 min
Kenji Yoshino: Diversity Does Not Mean Having to Choose Between Identity and Inclusion
Author and academic Kenji Yoshino describes the difference between passing and covering, and how companies will sometimes employ a facile form of diversity inclusion that necessitates the former.
2 min
Common Misunderstandings of Shakespeare
As part of Big Think’s “How to Think Like Shakespeare” series, our panel discusses the most common misunderstandings and misapplications of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare on Trial
Last night three U.S. Supreme Court judges participated in the annual mock trial event in Washington D.C. Law professor Kenji Yoshino explains how these events use Shakespeare to teach us about justice. 
4 min
Was Henry V a War Criminal?
If you ask conservative and liberal judges whether George W. Bush is a war criminal for invading Iraq, you are unlikely to find agreement. But ask them about Henry V, […]
The House is on Fire: Which Shakespeare Play Would You Save?
Peter Diamandis has suggested we need to practice "planetary redundancy" and back up crucial information "off the planet." What achievements of mankind deserve a place on this digital Noah's Ark?
Shakespeare, Our Contemporary
How does the greatest poet of the English language speak to our most pressing contemporary issues? A distinguished panel finds in Shakespeare some striking analogies to our expectations of Obama as a leader, the turmoil in the Middle East, and America's love of revenge.