Athena D. Mutua

Athena Mutua is a professor of law and the Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar at the University at Buffalo School of Law (SUNY).  She specializes in the area of civil rights and the critical analysis of the role of law in both facilitating and hindering justice across the intersections of race, class and gender.  Recent examples of this work include:  The Attack on Higher Education (with others, 2024); An Exegesis of the Meaning of Dobbs (2024); Reflections on Critical Race Theory in a Time of Backlash (2023); Mapping Racial Capitalism: Implications for Law (2022); Liberalism’s Identity Politics: A Reply to Fukuyama (2020).  In addition to legal scholarship, Professor Mutua has written in other areas, such as those found in her edited collection on Progressive Black Masculinities (2006), for which she received the UB Exceptional Scholars Young Investigator’s Award.

Professor Mutua is a founding member of the Critical Legal Collective, an organization meant to safeguard and advance critical studies in the wake of attacks on critical knowledge and multiracial democracy; and co-founder of ClassCrits, a network of scholars exploring issues of law and political economy.  Professor Mutua recently served as vice chair to the New York Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which published the reports: Examining the New York Child Welfare System and Its Impact on Black Children and Families (2024) and Racial Discrimination and Eviction Policies and Enforcement in New York (2022). She also recently chaired the University at Buffalo’s Presidential Review Board (tenure review body).  Professor Mutua teaches in the areas of business law, constitutional law and critical race theory.  In 2017, she received the Jacob D. Hyman Award for her work with students of color.  She holds law degrees from Harvard Law School and The American University, Washington College of Law.