Tomiko Brown-Nagin (bornc. 1970) is an American legal scholar, historian, and academic. She is dean ofHarvard Radcliffe Institute. She is also the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law atHarvard Law School and aHarvard University professor of history.

Brown-Nagin was bornc. 1970.[1] She graduated fromFurman University, where she was named aTruman Scholar and graduatedsumma cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1992.^[1] She earned a J.D. fromYale Law School,^[1] where she served as an editor of theYale Law Journal, in 1997, and a Ph.D. in history fromDuke University in 2002.^[2][3]

Brown-Nagin clerked forRobert L. Carter of theUnited States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and forJane Richards Roth of theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She began her career as a lawyer in private practice atPaul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, and then held the Charles Hamilton Houston Fellowship atHarvard Law School and a Golieb legal history fellowship atNew York University. Brown-Nagin was the T. Munford Boyd Professor of Law and Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law at theUniversity of Virginia Law School before joining the Harvard faculty.^[2]

Brown-Nagin was appointed faculty director of Harvard Law School's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute in 2017^[4] and served as co-director of the Law and History Program at Harvard Law School from 2013 to 2018.^[5]

In 2018, Brown-Nagin assumed the role as dean ofHarvard Radcliffe Institute.^[2] She is also the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law atHarvard Law School and a professor of history atHarvard University where she teaches courses on American legal history, constitutional law, education law and policy, and the U.S. Supreme Court and social reform.^[6]

As chair, Brown-Nagin led theHarvard Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery from 2019 to 2022. She served as coauthor of the report^[7] that “detail[ed] the University's direct, financial, and intellectual ties to slavery”. The publication of the report attracted media attention, including in the New York Review of Books^[8] and in theWashington Post.^[9][10]

Brown-Nagin has written and publicly spoken about constitutional law, legal history and the American civil rights movement, publishing books and articles for scholarly and popular audiences. In one article from 2014, she called on selective institutions of higher education to admit and financially support greater numbers of students who are the first in their families to attend college, an approach that she argued would attract needy students from all racial backgrounds.^[11]

In 2011, Brown-Nagin publishedCourage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2011), which won the 2012Bancroft Prize in history,^[12] the Liberty Legacy Award from theOrganization of American Historians, the John Phillip Reid Book Award from theAmerican Society for Legal History, the Charles Sydnor Award from theSouthern Historical Association, theLillian Smith Book Award from theSouthern Regional Council, and theHurston/Wright Legacy Award in the category of non-fiction.^[13][14][15]

In 2022, Brown-Nagin publishedCivil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Pantheon Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Order of the Coif Book Award (American Association of Law Schools), bestowed upon “authors of outstanding publications that evidence creative talent of the highest order.”^[16][17]Civil Rights Queen also won the 2023 Darlene Clark Hine Award (Organization of American History), 2023 Lillian Smith Book Award (Southern Regional Council/UGA), and has been featured in NPR, PBS, Harvard Magazine,Lovely One by JusticeKetanji Brown Jackson,^[18] and other publications.^[19][20]

In 2020, Brown-Nagin testified before the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties that held a briefing “on how the violent treatment of protestors and journalists across the country by federal and local law enforcement have violated the First Amendment.”^[21]

Brown-Nagin was selected as a fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020. She was the recipient of theGraduate School of Duke University's distinguished alumni award in 2022. Brown-Nagin was awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities fromFurman University in 2023.^[22] She is a member of the board of directors ofProPublica. Brown-Nagin is also an elected member of theAmerican Philosophical Society,American Law Institute, and theAmerican Bar Foundation.

In 1998, Brown-Nagin marriedDaniel L. Nagin, a Harvard Law School professor.^[1]

• Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Pantheon Books 2022).^[23][24]
• "Constance Baker Motley Taught the Nation How to Win Justice", 2022Smithsonian Magazine.
• “The Mentoring Gap: Race and Higher Education Commentary Series,” 129Harv. L. Rev. F. 303 (2016).
• Reconsidering the Insular Cases: The Past and Future of American Empire (Harvard University Press, 2015) (co-edited with Gerald Neuman).
• "Two Americas in Healthcare: Federalism and Wars over Poverty from the New Deal-Great Society to Obamacare," 62Drake L. Review (2014).
• “Rethinking Proxies for Economic Disadvantage: A First Generation Students’ Project,” 2014 U. Chi. Legal F. 433 (Fall 2014).
• "The Diversity Paradox: Judicial Review in an Age of Demographic and Educational Change" 65Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc 113 (2012)
• Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press 2011).
• "Elites, Social Movements, and the Law: The Case of Affirmative Action", 105Columbia Law Review 1436 (2005).
• "Race as Identity Caricature: A Local Legal History Lesson in the Salience of Intra-Racial Conflict", 151University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1913 (2003).

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