Derrick Bell is a professor at New York University Law School. Professor Bell joined Harvard Law School in 1969 and, in 1971, he became that school's first black tenured law professor. In 1990, he went on an unpaid leave of absence in support of student efforts to achieve more racial and gender diversity on the faculty. When his protest continued beyond the school's two-year limit on leaves of absence, he was dismissed. His career work includes work in the late 1950s with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and work on the legal team at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he was recruited by Thurgood Marshall. Credited with advancing the academic study of race and racism as a legal issue, in 1973 Bell authored what has become a standard law school text, Race, Racism and American Law (Little, Brown and Company). The 3rd edition of this book was published in 1992.

	Stretching the bounds of legal discourse, he utilized allegorical fiction in works intended to make the intersections of law and race more accessible to the public. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (Basic Books, 1987) introduced Geneva Crenshaw, the popular fictional character who returned in Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (Basic Books, 1992). Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester (Beacon Press, 1994) is a personal reflection on the risks and rewards of individual protests. Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival in an Alien Land Called Home (Basic Books, 1996) recalls the faith and commitment contained in black music, particularly gospel music, as a foundation for the building of new strategies to address serious, current problems.