Prof. Myron Orfield Named Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute

Professor Myron Orfield, Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law, and director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, has been named a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. As a senior fellow, he will advise on fair housing issues and the opportunities and challenges of growing racial diversity in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas.

At Minnesota Law, Orfield teaches courses on the legislative process, Twin Cities regional planning in the national context, and legal remedies to school and neighborhood segregation.

Orfield is a preeminent scholar and nationally recognized expert in civil rights, anti-discrimination law, constitutional law, and land-use planning, among other areas. He is the author of three books, dozens of articles, and book chapters on regional planning, state and local government law, spatial inequality, fair housing, school desegregation, charter schools, state and local taxation and finance, and land use law. The syndicated columnist Neal Peirce called Orfield "the most influential demographer in America's burgeoning regional movement." Vice President Walter F. Mondale '56 called Orfield “one of the nation’s leading experts on the Fair Housing Act.” Orfield's research has led to legislative, administrative, and doctrinal reforms at the federal and state levels in Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and Maryland.

Orfield graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota and was a graduate student at Princeton University. He has a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he received the Patino Fellowship, served on the University of Chicago Law Review, and was a finalist in the Hinton Moot Court competition. Following law school, he clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. He then returned to the University of Chicago Law School as a research associate and a Bradley Fellow at the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit research organization that improves lives and strengthens communities through research, collaboration, and policy work.