Scholar & Social Justice Advocate; Founding Director of the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society

Philadelphia, PA, USA
Live Event: $20,000 - $30,000 Virtual Event: $5,000 - $10,000 More Fee Info

Dorothy Roberts Biography

Dorothy Roberts is the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology, and the Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at University of Pennsylvania. She is a 2024 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. She is also the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society. An internationally acclaimed scholar, activist, and social critic, she has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare. Her latest book, "Torn Apart," is about how the child welfare system destroys black families and how abolition can build a safer world.

Roberts is also the author of "Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century," which documents the rise of a new racial politics that relies on re-inventing the political system of race as a biological category written in our genes and obscures deepening racial inequities in a supposedly post-racial society; "Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty," which received a 1998 Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America; and "Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare," which received research awards from the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community and the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children. She is also the co-editor of "Sex, Power and Taboo: Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond," as well as of casebooks on gender and constitutional law and has published more than 100 articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, and “Race” in the 1619 Project book.

Roberts has served on the boards of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Center for Genetics and Society, Juvenile Law Center, and National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, and her work has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Fulbright Program, Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions, Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and Northwestern Institute for Policy Research. Recent recognitions of her work include election to the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine, Rutgers University-Newark Honorary Doctor of Law Degree, Juvenile Law Center Leadership Prize, Abortion Liberation Fund of PA Rosie Jimenez Award, New Voices for Reproductive Justice Voice of Vision Award, Society of Family Planning Lifetime Achievement, and American Psychiatric Association Solomon Carter Fuller Award.

BOOK Dorothy Roberts

Speaker profile last updated by AAE Talent Team on 01/29/2026.

Dorothy Roberts Speaking Topics

  • The Urgency of Reproductive Justice After Dobbs

    Since the 1980s, the longstanding devaluation of Black women’s childbearing has supported an expanded criminalization of pregnancy that encompasses fetal protection laws, abortion restrictions, and family policing. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health spotlights the entanglement of these forms of reproductive violence, which Roe v. Wade and the mainstream reproductive rights movement largely ignored. Especially telling is how the Dobbs Court’s recommendation of adoption as a remedy for abortion paints a false picture of both reproductive servitude’s history and the child welfare system’s current operation. Black feminists have developed a reproductive justice framework that includes the human right not to have a child, to have a child, and to raise children in safe, supportive, and sustainable communities—a framework made more urgent than ever by Dobbs.

  • Mistreating Health Inequities in the Genomic Age

    Doctors and biomedical researchers in the United States have long defined disease and treated patients according to race. Although the map of the human genome confirmed that race is not written in our genes, we are witnessing the re-creation of race in biological terms using cutting-edge genomic science and biotechnologies, such as race-specific medicines and ancestry tests, that incorporate false assumptions about racial difference. Although genetics can help find cures for common diseases, such as cancer, the genetic concept of race misunderstands the nature of human difference and masks the devastating impact of racism on our bodies and society. Instead, good medicine and health justice require affirming our common humanity by working to end social inequities supported by the political system of race.

Dorothy Roberts Videos

Dorothy Roberts | Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System

Dorothy Roberts | Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System

Master Class in Activism: Dorothy Roberts, "Torn Apart"

Master Class in Activism: Dorothy Roberts, "Torn Apart"

upEND Movement: Derecka Purnell and Dorothy Roberts

upEND Movement: Derecka Purnell and Dorothy Roberts

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  • What topics does Dorothy Roberts speak about?

  • Where does Dorothy Roberts travel from?

    Dorothy Roberts generally travels from Philadelphia, PA, USA, but can be booked for private corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. For more details, please contact an AAE Booking agent.
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Dorothy Roberts is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as The Urgency of Reproductive Justice After Dobbs and Mistreating Health Inequities in the Genomic Age. The estimated speaking fee range to book Dorothy Roberts for your event is $20,000 - $30,000. Dorothy Roberts generally travels from Philadelphia, PA, USA and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Maya Wiley, Clayborne Carson, Minnijean Brown Trickey, Xernona Clayton and Ijeoma Oluo. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Dorothy Roberts for an upcoming live or virtual event.

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