Research Agenda

My research agenda examines the interplay of Diversity, Dominance, and Discrimination (3D) in the private ordering of capital markets, corporations, and educational institutions. I bridge law, social psychology, and organizational sociology to examine how legal tools, doctrines, and ideologies—especially those claiming to promote equality—reproduce the very racial hierarchy that law purports to redress. Across my projects, I develop and apply a model of discrimination that foregrounds dominance—as opposed to racial bias or animus—as the primary force operating through legal, institutional, and psychological mechanisms to sustain racial inequality. The model undergirds a normative call for a shift in our we conceptualize DEI and race-consciousness, civil rights, and the relationship between anti-discrimination and private law. 

Diversity, Dominance & Discrimination in The Private Ordering of Business

This stream investigates how the legal tools & doctrines—especially those in private law—both legitimize and coalesce with practices of corporate formation and governance in ways that preserve racial hierarchy, while performing inclusion. Here, I examine how private agreements (such as venture capital contracts and corporate nondisclosure agreements) and regulatory regimes (like SEC disclosure rules or compliance frameworks) structure control, suppress accountability, and enable symbolic inclusion without redistributing power.

Implicit social Dominance & The Future of Anti-Discrimination Law

This work expands traditional and critical legal models for race discrimination by identifying a foundational psychosocial mechanism fueling it: social dominance. Building on theories of implicit cognition in psychology and anti-subordination & structural racism in Critical Race Theory, I identify and examine how cognition about structure & power itself (vs. identity) motivates behavior. This innovation leverages psychological methods—including the development of an Implicit Social Dominance Orientation (ISDO) measure—to visibilize categories of discriminatory practices that turn on racial inclusion rather than racial exclusion but nonetheless keep racial hierarchies in tact. I explore how this psychosocial dominance mechanism operates in anti-discrimination law, interrogating the scope of statutory and doctrinal remedies like Title VII, §1981, and equal protection

The Legal Life of identity & intersectionality

This area examines how law constructs, constrains, and operationalizes identity. I analyze how institutional and doctrinal investments in identity—through representation, credentialing, and inclusion logics—can reproduce the very hierarchies they purport to dismantle. Drawing from critical race theory, social psychology, and legal scholarship, I explore the consequences of law’s inability to fully engage the complexity of identity in shaping belonging, legitimacy, and rights-claiming.