Kate O’Regan

Catherine (Kate) O’Regan was born in Liverpool, England but grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained a BA and an LLB at the University of Cape Town, an LLM at the University of Sydney in Australia and a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. During the 1980s, she worked as an attorney in Johannesburg specialising in labour law and land rights law. At the end of that decade, she joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town where she taught civil procedure, evidence and labour law. In 1994, she was appointed a judge of the newly established Constitutional Court of South Africa. Her fifteen year term of office came to an end in 2009. Since then she has served as an ad hoc judge of the Namibian Supreme Court, chairperson of the United Nations Internal Justice Council (since 2008), President of the International Monetary Fund Administrative Tribunal and as a visiting professor at the University of Oxford and an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town.

Kate O’Regan is the author of Undoing Humiliation, Fostering Equal Citizenship: Human Dignity in South Africa’s Sexual Orientation Equality Jurisprudence.

Mary Bernstein

Mary Bernstein is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her scholarship seeks to understand the role of identity in social movements and how movement actors interact with the state and the law, with a particular focus on the LGBT movement. She has published numerous articles in the fields of social movements, sexualities, gender, and law and is co-editor of three books: Queer Families, Queer Politics: Challenging Culture and the State (Columbia University Press, 2001), Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law (NYU Press, 2009) and The Marrying Kind: Debating Same-Sex Marriage Within the Lesbian and Gay Movement (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Recent publications include “What Are You? Explaining Identity as a Goal of the Multiracial Hapa Movement” (co-authored with Marcie De La Cruz, Social Problems); “Identity Politics” (Annual Review of Sociology); “Paths to Homophobia” (Sexuality Research and Social Policy); “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained? Conceptualizing Social Movement ‘Success’ in the Lesbian and Gay Movement” (Sociological Perspectives); and “Culture, Power, and Institutions: A Multi-Institutional Politics Approach to Social Movements” (co-authored with Elizabeth Armstrong, Sociological Theory). Recent awards include the Outstanding Article Award from the American Sociological Association Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements (2009). She is currently deputy editor of the journal Gender & Society.

Mary Bernstein is the author of Perry and the LGTBQ Movement.

Urvashi Vaid

Urvashi Vaid is the Director of Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at the Columbia Law School.  Vaid is a long time organizer and leader in the LGBT and progressive movements who has served as executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project.  She worked for ten years in global philanthropy serving as executive director of the Arcus Foundation and deputy director of the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Unit, and   is a current Board member of the Gill Foundation. Vaid is the author of Irresistible Revolution:  Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics and Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation.  She is co-editor with John D’Emilio and William Turner of an anthology of histories of key LGBT policy wins titled Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights.

Professor Vaid is the author of “Now You Get What You Want, Do You Want More?”.

Natasha J. Rivera-Silber

Natasha J. Rivera-Silber is a third-year student at N.Y.U. Law School. Prior to law school, she attended Yale College where she studied History and Ethnicity, Race & Migration.  She then received an M.A. in U.S. History at Yale University, where served as a Teaching Fellow in Gay & Lesbian History and U.S. International History. In law school, she has been an Articles Editor for the N.Y.U. Law Review, an AnBryce Scholar, and a board member of the Latin American Law Students Association.  She also served as a student representative for the N.Y.U. Immigrant Rights Clinic. Through the clinic, she co-authored two amicus briefs for the Supreme Court: one in Vartelas v. Holder, which was cited by the Court, and the other in Arizona v. United States.  Next year, she will join the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. In 2014, she will clerk for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams, United States Court of Appeals Judge for the Seventh Circuit.

Natasha J. Rivera-Silber is the author of “Coming Out Undocumented” in the Age of Perry.