Alan Jenkins

Alan Jenkins is a professor of practice at Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on race and the law, communication, and Supreme Court jurisprudence. Before joining the law school faculty, he was president and cofounder of the Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab.

Jenkins’s prior positions have included assistant to the solicitor general at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he represented the U.S. government in constitutional and other litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court; director of human rights at the Ford Foundation, where he managed grantmaking in the United States and eleven overseas regions; and associate counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he defended the rights of low-income communities facing exploitation and discrimination. He previously served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and to U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Carter.

Jenkins is a frequent commentator in broadcast, print, and digital media on topics including Supreme Court decision-making, racial equity, and the role of popular culture in social change. His past board service includes New York Public Radio, the Center for Community Change, the Legal Action Center, and Futuro Media Group, as well as the board of governors of the New School for Public Engagement. He has also served on the selection committee for the Sundance Documentary Fund.

Jenkins holds a BA in psychology and social relations from Harvard College, an MA in media studies from the New School for Public Engagement, and a JD from Harvard Law School.