Osagie Kingsley Obasogie (born August 21, 1977) is a law professor and

bioethicist Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

. He is the Haas Distinguished Chair, Professor of Law at Berkeley Law, and Professor of

Bioethics Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

in the

UC Berkeley – UCSF Joint Medical Program The UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP) is a joint degree program in the University of California system between the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the UCSF School of Medicine. Students spend their pre-clerkship years at UC Berkel ...

and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He studies bioethics, sociology, and law, in particular race in law and medicine.

Education and academic positions

Obasogie studied sociology and political science at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, where he received his B.A. in 1999. In 2002 he graduated with a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He then studied sociology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, obtaining his PhD there in 2008. From 2008 to 2016, Obasogie was a law professor at The University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Academic work

Obasogie is known for his 2013 book ''Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race In The Eyes Of The Blind'', which describes his research on how blind people perceive race. In ''Blinded by Sight'', Obasogie established through interview research that the perception of race does not depend on the ability to see individuals' skin colors; rather, people who are not able to see are nevertheless able to assemble contextual cues to determine others' races, and this can affect how they behave towards others. Obasogie argues that this sociological phenomenon has immediate implications for jurisprudence, for example in considerations about the

Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...

, where the legal consensus rests on the idea that a person's racial identity is visually obvious and immediately knowable. The book was noted for employing a successful research design to recover original insights which challenge the seemingly obvious assumption that race is communicated visually, contributing to sociological, legal, and ethical theories about race. Obasogie has been credited, together with a few other faculty members, with causing the University of California, Berkeley to shut down a eugenics research fund that it had used to fund research by faculty members in its School of Public Health. Obasogie has been a frequent media commentator and analyst on topics like racial justice and medical ethics, publishing opinion articles in outlets such as ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', and ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

''.

References

External links

Faculty page
{{US-law-bio-stub Living people 1977 births Bioethicists American legal scholars University of California, Berkeley faculty UC Berkeley School of Public Health alumni Yale University alumni University of California, San Francisco faculty Columbia Law School alumni University of California College of the Law, San Francisco faculty Members of the National Academy of Medicine