Rachel Godsil

Rachel Godsil is co-founder and co-director of Perception Institute and a distinguished professor of law and Chancellor’s Scholar at Rutgers Law School. She collaborates with social scientists on empirical research to identify the efficacy of interventions to address implicit bias, racial anxiety and stereotype threat. She regularly leads workshops and presentations addressing the role of bias and anxiety associated with race, ethnicity, religion and gender, focusing on education, criminal justice, health care and the workplace.

Godsil is in the board of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. She served as chair of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board in 2014 and 2015. After serving as the convener for the Obama campaign’s Urban and Metropolitan Policy Committee and an advisor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development transition team, Godsil co-directed a report to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan entitled “Retooling HUD for a Catalytic Federal Government.” Godsil was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. She was an associate counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, focusing on environmental justice, as well as an associate with Berle, Kass & Case and Arnold & Porter in New York City. Previously, she was Eleanor Bontecou Professor of Law at Seton Hall University Law School and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and New York University Law School. She received a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.