Monique W. Morris Biography

Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. is an author and social justice scholar with more than 20 years of professional and volunteer experience in the areas of education, civil rights, juvenile and social justice. Dr. Morris is the author of Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century (The New Press, 2014), Too Beautiful for Words (MWM Books, 2012); and Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (The New Press, 2016), a forthcoming book on the criminalization of Black girls in schools. She has written dozens of articles, book chapters, and other publications on social justice issues and lectured widely on research, policies, and practices associated with improving juvenile justice, educational, and socioeconomic conditions for Black girls, women, and their families.

Dr. Morris is the Co-Founder and President of The National Black Women’s Justice Institute and a 2012 Soros Justice Fellow. She is a former lecturer for Saint Mary’s College of California and adjunct professor for the University of San Francisco. She is also the former Vice President for Economic Programs, Advocacy and Research at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the former Director of Research for the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the UC Berkeley Law School. Dr. Morris has also worked in partnership with and served as a consultant for state and county agencies, national academic and research institutions, and communities throughout the nation to develop comprehensive approaches and training curricula to eliminate racial/ethnic and gender disparities in the justice system. Her work in this area has informed the development and implementation of improved culturally competent and gender-responsive continua of services for youth.

Dr. Morris’ research intersects race, gender, education and justice to explore the ways in which Black communities, and other communities of color, are uniquely affected by social policies. Among other publications, Dr. Morris is the author of "Representing the Educational Experiences of Black Girls in a Juvenile Court School" (Journal of Applied Research on Children, 2014); "Sacred Inquiry and Delinquent Black Girls: Developing a Foundation for a Liberative Pedagogical Praxis" (In Understanding Work Experiences from Multiple Perspectives, edited by G.D. Sardana and Tojo Thatchenkery, 2014); Educating the Caged Bird: Black Girls and the Juvenile Court School (Poverty & Race, PRRAC, 2013) and Race, Gender and the School to Prison Pipeline: Expanding Our Discussion to Include Black Girls (African American Policy Forum, 2012). Her 2008 study, A Higher Hurdle: Barriers to Employment for Formerly Incarcerated Women (UC Berkeley School of Law), which is one of the first testing studies to examine the impact of a criminal record or period of incarceration on the employment outcomes of women, was referenced in a special report commissioned by Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-IL).

Dr. Morris is a member of the OJJDP National Girls Institute Expert Panel, the California Board of State and Community Corrections’ Committee on Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparity, and other workgroups designed to improve the education of children in contact with the criminal and juvenile legal systems. She is also an advisory board member for Global Girl Media, Oakland. Follow Dr. Morris on Twitter @MoniqueWMorris.

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