Biography

Ellen Berrey, PhD, is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto and an affiliated scholar of the American Bar Foundation. Her research explores the cultural dynamics of racism, law, organizations, and social movements. Her current research projects investigate the interactions between movements and the institutions they target. One project uses historical case studies to show how a populist U.S. social movement helped to normalize conspiracy theory in local governance in the 2010s. The other, in collaboration with Alex Hanna, is a large quantitative study of campus protest in the U.S. and Canada in the 2010s. That study focuses on anti-racism student protest, university administrations’ responses, and protest policing.

Here’s a profile of Ellen’s work which was posted by Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public.

Her first book, The Enigma of Diversity: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice (University of Chicago Press 2015) demonstrates how the legal and organizational push for “diversity” in the U.S. has watered down a more radical goal of racial justice. It was awarded the 2016 Herbert Jacob Book Prize of the Law & Society Association; the 2016 Distinguished Book Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) Sociology of Law section; and the 2016 Mary Douglas Book Prize Honorable Mention of the ASA Sociology of the Culture section. You can read about it in the New Yorker. Her Salon article, “Diversity Is for White People,” has been shared on social media more than 33,000 times.

Ellen’s second book, with Robert Nelson and Laura Beth Nielsen, Rights on Trial: How Workplace Discrimination Law Perpetuates Inequality (University of Chicago Press 2017) reveals the limitations of civil rights law as a response to problems of discrimination at work. It was awarded the 2018 Distinguished Book Prize Honorable Mention from the ASA Sociology of Law section. For more, visit the book website and check out chapter 1.