Ric S. Sheffield

Ric S. Sheffield is Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies and Sociology at Kenyon College. He was the founding Director of the John Adams Summer Scholars Program in Socio-legal Studies and the inaugural appointee as the Peter M. Rutkoff Distinguished Teaching Professor of American Studies, Diversity & Inclusion

Before coming to Kenyon, he served for a decade as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Ohio. He began his legal career as a civil rights lawyer handling primarily sex and racial discrimination cases. Subsequently, he held the position of chief attorney and head of the state’s consumer protection division.

In addition to research that has focused upon the relationship between law and issues of gender, race, and ethnicity, he has spent several years examining issues involving the history and experience of African Americans in rural Ohio. He is among a select group of scholars chosen to participate in the Ohio Humanities Council’s speakers’ bureau, lecturing widely on issues of race and law as well as rural diversity. He has published articles, reviews, and book chapters on topics including legal history, the legal profession, and African American social and legal history. Sheffield is the author of "We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland" and the forthcoming "False Promises: The Struggle for Black Voting Rights in 1800s Ohio," which examines early voting rights cases and the brave men who brought them in the state of Ohio in the mid-to-late 1800s.

He is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University where he attended college, graduate school in sociology, and law school. He has extensive administrative experience that includes serving on various statewide policy-making and regulatory boards, chairing academic departments and programs, and several years on Kenyon College’s senior staff as an associate provost. He is the founding director of the Knox County (Ohio) Black History Digital Archives, one of the first and few of its kind with a focus on rural life, and has led workshops on researching and exploring local Black history and rural diversity.