Derrick Bell, distinguished Civil Rights advocate and father of Critical Race Theory, died today at the age of 80, the New York Times reports . Bell, the first African-American law professor at Harvard, and the first dean of a non-historically black law school, led an interesting life, influencing our own President Barack Obama, who compared him to bus boycott heroine Rosa Parks. He left Harvard Law School when they refused to change their hiring practices to allow minorities a chance to teach at the famous Ivy League school. Perhaps more famous for rejecting high positions in education and government than accepting them, Bell once resigned from working at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in his 20s, after his superiors told him to give up his membership in the N.A.A.C.P., believing it posed a conflict of interest. Professor Bell’s core beliefs included what he called “the interest convergence dilemma” — the idea that whites would not support efforts to improve the p...
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