TJSL Associate Professor Meera Deo is a Visiting Professor at UCLA School of Law for Spring 2014. In Fall 2013, she was a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley Law's Center for the Study of Law & Society. Professor Deo is a nationally-recognized interdisciplinary scholar who utilizes empirical methods to interrogate institutional diversity and affirmative action.
As a Visiting Professor at UCLA, Professor Deo is part of the Critical Race Studies faculty and has primary responsibility for teaching Asian American Jurisprudence. She has been fully immersed in the UCLA School of Law so far this semester. For instance, she is presenting research to the full faculty drawing from a forthcoming publication, participated as a guest speaker in a UCLA faculty colleague’s course to present findings from a separate empirical project, and was a panel moderator for a student conference.
“I have been enjoying my time at UCLA School of Law tremendously! The interdisciplinary interests of the faculty are a wonderful asset to my scholarship,” said Deo. “The students, faculty, and staff all have been warm and welcoming. While it has certainly been an interesting semester, I’m also looking forward to returning to my regular routine at TJSL.”
Professor Deo practiced civil rights law with the ACLU National Legal Department in New York City, where she worked on impact litigation involving privacy and cyberspace law. She was later Staff Attorney for Women's Health, and Director of the Breast Cancer Legal Project at the California Women's Law Center, a statewide women’s advocacy nonprofit based in Los Angeles. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, and numerous University of California grants and awards supported her doctoral dissertation on social capital formation among members of law student organizations. Professor Deo currently serves on the Executive Committee for the AALS Section on Law and the Social Sciences and is an appointee to the California Commission on Access to Justice.
Professor Deo’s interdisciplinary and empirical research on institutional diversity has been cited in numerous amicus briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Her scholarship draws from original empirical research to investigate the law student and law faculty experience. She is currently collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data for a landmark study of diversity in legal academia that examines how the intersectionality of race and gender affect tenure and promotion, work/life balance, institutional support, and other aspects of the personal and professional lives of American law faculty. She is a regular speaker at national and regional conferences including those organized by the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), Law & Society, the American Sociological Association (ASA), and the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). Professor Deo’s scholarship has been published in leading law journals around the country including Hastings Law Journal, the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, the Harvard Journal on Racial & Ethnic Justice, and the Journal of Legal Education.
