Critical (Legal) Collective Inaugural Convening

Athena D. Mutua
(UB School of Law)
admutua@buffalo.edu

The Critical (Legal) Collective is a group of legal scholars representing some of the many intellectual formations affiliated with critical legal theory — including, Critical Race Theory, Asian American Legal Scholarship, ClassCrits, Critical Legal Studies, Feminist Legal Theory, eCRT, Indigenous Law and Policy, Jurisprudence of Distribution, LatCrit, Law & Political Economy, Third World Approaches to International Law, and more. We promote a more inclusive, democratic, and just society through scholarship, teaching, and advocacy that reckons honestly with past and present structural oppression.

What does the L stand for? Legal — but also Love, Liberation, Literature, Labor, Land, and Life.

Our Mission

The Critical (Legal) Collective is a group of scholars and activists who have come together to protect and advance critical studies in the wake of continuing attacks on critical knowledge and multiracial democracy. Grounded in the experiences of diverse peoples whom elites and their agents marginalize in law and society, critical studies endeavor to identify, challenge, and change inequitable sociolegal practices. Through creative and rigorous investigation, critical studies distill empowering insight and knowledge from the experiences of those who suffer persistent injustices and struggle to make the promises of democracy real through participation in intersecting justice movements regarding race, sex, gender, class, disability, sovereignty, immigration, and climate, among others across the hemisphere and globally.

We believe that educators have a duty to teach students how to think critically and honestly, and that universities have a duty to protect (and expand) critical studies. Our mission thus is to ensure that students, teachers, scholars, advocates, activists, and community groups have access to sources of critical knowledge and support in applying this knowledge within the university and surrounding communities.

We work to advance the following core goals:

• To expand community building, networks, and mutual aid among individuals who participate in the production, expression, and application of critical knowledge in higher education; and to combat censorship, intimidation, or retaliation that targets critical voices.
• To support and expand teaching, learning, research, scholarship, advocacy, and activism grounded in critical knowledge, which includes making critical knowledge more practical, accessible, and actionable in efforts to strengthen democratic decision making on campuses, in workplaces, and in communities.