Christina Luk ’21
Executive Editor
There are many things you wouldn’t know about Professor Kim Forde-Mazrui just from meeting him. For instance, contrary to popular belief, “Forde-Mazrui” is not a hyphenation of his parents’ last names but of his wife’s last name “Forde” and his own last name “Mazrui.” They decided to hyphenate when they adopted their son. For thirty years, there have been just three Forde-Mazruis in the world, but there might soon be a fourth! Professor KFM’s son recently got married and his husband is thinking of changing his name.
So, because Professor KFM is a mystery and because he is amazing, I made it my mission to grab lunch with him. I flexed my underutilized advocacy skills and invited him to lunch with myself, Grace Tang ’21, and Nate Wunderli ’22 as part of Law Weekly’s faculty lunch series. As we sat down to eat, it became readily apparent that Professor KFM was a fan of the paper and he had come prepared. While I scrambled to come up with questions he hadn’t anticipated, we dove into his life at the Law School.
Here at the University of Virginia, Professor KFM is the Mortimer M. Caplin Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Law. Professor KFM joined the faculty in 1996. When we asked what’s changed over the last two decades, Professor KFM cited both the building and the role of technology. The Law School used to be just Withers-Brown Hall, but when the Business School “built that palace up the road,” the Law School bought what is now Slaughter Hall and effectively doubled its size.
Luckily for all of us, when the school underwent construction to merge the two halls, they also revamped the classrooms. Withers-Brown actually used to be called “Withers High” on account of its tacky, plastic school desks. And in true modern fashion, the school had also installed phone jacks next to every seat so people could connect to the internet via dial up. (Footnote: The sound of dozens of computers simultaneously connecting to CompuServe haunts me.)
Professor KFM’s scholarship is primarily race-related and he’s written about child placement, affirmative action, policing, and jury selection. When we asked how his legal interests have evolved over time, he told us that, actually, “I found discussions of race frustrating in law school. I remember, when I joined law review, and my friend asked me what I wanted to write about, I said, ‘Anything but race!’”
Looking back, Professor KFM attributes his early frustration to the fact that he “didn’t fully agree with either side.” Instead, he felt that he had an “outsider’s perspective, despite growing up here.” He conjectured that perhaps, as an immigrant, he was “less saddled by America’s racial history,” and therefore more inclined to take competing perspectives seriously.
Professor KFM also felt that his upbringing and background had a big impact on his approach to race. Professor KFM’s father was Kenyan, black, and Muslim; his mother is British, white, and raised Christian. For the first few years of his life, Professor KFM lived in Uganda while his father taught political science at Makerere University. In 1971, however, Dictator Idi Amin came to power, and Professor KFM’s father, an outspoken opponent of the dictatorship, came under pressure from the university to relocate. The family moved to Palo Alto, California, where Professor KFM’s father taught at Stanford for a couple of years, before joining the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
There, Professor KFM joked, he spent grades 1-19 in “Ann Arbor public schools,” meaning his K-12 education, plus undergrad and law school at the University of Michigan. After law school, Professor KFM clerked for Judge Cornelia G. Kennedy of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, but he loved Ann Arbor so much he opted to carpool an hour every day instead of moving to Detroit. When we asked if he’d ever move back to Ann Arbor, Professor KFM assured us that he loves his UVA students too much to go. He’s been here twenty-three years and he plans to leave “in a pine box.”[1]
Lightning Round:
What’s your favorite food?
Kuku Wa Kupaka , a Swahili dish much like a coconut flavored chicken curry. My mom makes it.
Favorite restaurant?
Bamboo House.
Pet peeve?
When people won’t tell me how they want to be addressed when they have a name that can be shortened.
Favorite show?
Roots, the original 1977 series.
Favorite word?
Equality.
What’s a hobby of yours?
Ping-pong. I play every day with my wife in our driveway. I’m actually very good despite having very poor eyesight. It’s because my vision is very bad in the center, but my peripheral vision is actually okay.
Has your eyesight always been bad?
Well, I became legally blind when I was ten. It’s genetic, but it was triggered by chickenpox. It’s affected both my older brothers as well as they got older.
As a scholar, how do you deal with being legally blind?
Technology helps. While I was in law school, I would listen to my textbooks on audio cassette through headphones. My classmates would ask, wow, how do you have time to listen to music, and I would say, music? I’m listening to contracts! Nowadays, I use a talking computer and phone.
What’s your least favorite sound?
A loud lawnmower while I’m playing ping-pong.
What’s your favorite song and why?
“Let It Be” by The Beatles. It helps me feel at peace.
What is a hill you would die on?
Olives are the worst and so are IPAs. They’re bitter!
What do you do for fun?
Watch Sci-fi. I’ve seen every Star Trek series. I also love The Twilight Zone.
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cl3eh@virginia.edu
[1] But maybe Dean Goluboff should give him a raise juuuust to be sure.