The Columbia Law School Mindfulness Program invites you to a meditation for faculty, staff, and students, held via live-stream on Wednesday, December 23rd from 12:45-1:25pm. These sessions are oriented to beginners and also open to those more experienced with mindfulness practices, and they include guided meditation as well as discussion of mindfulness meditation. Participants are also invited to bring lunch to these sessions and enjoy their meal in community. This week's session will be led by Gina Sharpe and hosted by Professor Kendall Thomas (bios below).
To access the live-stream of this session, please follow this link.
Gina Sharpe was born in Jamaica and immigrated to New York at the age of 11. She has an A.B. in Philosophy from Barnard College and a J.D. from New York University School of Law. Before practicing law, she worked for the New York City government (the Lindsay Administration), in the motion picture industry (as Assistant to the Producer of feature length films Little Big Man, Paper Lion and Alice’s Restaurant), as well as conducting research in public not-for-profits. As a lawyer, she practiced as a corporate litigator and then as a corporate lawyer. She also served as an executive in the fields of venture capital and mergers and acquisitions.
After retiring from the practice of law, she co-founded New York Insight Meditation Center. She currently serves as the Guiding Teacher. Trained as a retreat teacher in a joint Teacher Training Program of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and Insight Meditation Society, she teaches at various venues around the United States including Spirit Rock, Insight Meditation Society, Vallecitos Mountain Refuge, Mid America Dharma, Garrison Institute, Asia Society, Tibet House, the New York Open Center, the Katonah Yoga Center and a maximum security prison for women. She has been teaching the Dharma since 1995. She has served on the boards of directors of several not-for-profit and for-profit organizations.
Kendall Thomas is a scholar of comparative constitutional law and human rights whose teaching and research focus on critical race theory, intersectionality, legal philosophy, feminist legal theory, and law and sexuality. Thomas is the co-founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School, where he leads interdisciplinary projects and programs that explore how the law operates as one of the central ways to create meaning in society. He is a founder of Amend the 13th, a movement to amend the U.S. Constitution to end enforced prison labor. His seminal writing on the intersection of race and law appears in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Founded the Movement (1996), which he co-edited. He is also a co-editor of Legge Razza Diritti: La Critical Race Theory negli Stati Uniti (2005) and What's Left of Theory? (2000). He also has written and spoken widely on the impact of AIDS and was a founding member of the Majority Action Caucus of ACT UP, Sex Panic!, and the AIDS Prevention Action League. A former board member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, he now serves on the board of the NYC AIDS Memorial. Thomas is also a professional jazz vocalist who performs at venues including Joe’s Pub and is on the board of advisors of the Broadway Advocacy Coalition.
