Dean Spade
Dean Spade is an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law. He teaches Administrative Law, Poverty Law, and Law and Social Movements. Prior to joining the faculty of Seattle University, Dean was a Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School, teaching classes related to sexual orientation and gender identity law and law and social movements.
In 2002, Dean founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color. SRLP also engages in litigation, policy reform and public education on issues affecting these communities and operates on a collective governance model, prioritizing the governance and leadership of trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming people of color. While working at SRLP, Dean taught classes focusing on sexual orientation, gender identity and law at Columbia and Harvard Law Schools.
From 1998-2006, Dean co-edited the paper and online zine, Make. Dean is currently the co-editor of the online journal, Enough, which focuses on the personal politics of wealth redistribution.
Dean is currently a fellow in the “Engaging Tradition” project at Columbia Law School. His book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law was published in 2011.
“Power is not a matter of one dominant individual or institutions, but instead manifests in interconnected, contradictory sites where regimes of knowledge and practice circulate and take hold. This way of understanding the dispersion of power helps us realize that power is not simply about certain individuals being targeted for death or exclusion by a ruler, but instead about the creation of norms that distribute vulnerability and security.”
“The point for me is to create relationships based on deeper and more real notions of trust. So that love becomes defined not by sexual exclusivity, but by actual respect, concern, commitment to act with kind intentions, accountability for our actions, and a desire for mutual growth.”
“Let’s be gentle with ourselves and each other and fierce as we fight oppression.”