Professional Affiliation

University of Mississippi School of Law

Expert Bio

Barbara Y. Phillips most recently offered a seminar, Political and Civil Rights, as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law. She received her J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law and her J.S.M. from Stanford Law School. She was  formerly a Program Officer in the Human Rights unit of the Ford Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, she was an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, Spaeth Fellow at Stanford Law School, partner in the San Francisco law firm Rosen & Phillips, and staff attorney with the Voting Rights Project of the national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She is a member of the board of directors of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO.org). She lives in Oxford, Mississippi and serves on its Commission on Police Transparency. Her publications include three essays: How I Became a Civil Rights Lawyer, The Legacy of Other Social Justice Movements, and The Trojan Horse Called “Diversity” in Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers: Reflections from the Deep South, 1964-1980 (ed. Kent Spriggs, University Press of Florida 2017);  How a Targeted Triggering Approach Can Repair the Voting Rights Act: Congress Can Eliminate the Blight of Voting Discrimination Once and For All, Voting Rights Symposium, 85 Miss. L.J. 6, 1163 (2017) (co-authored with Joaquin G. Avila); The Gift of Hopwood: Diversity and the Fife and Drum March Back to the 19^th Century, 34 Ga. L. Rev. 291 (Fall 1999).