UCLA School of Law has received a $1 million gift from Alicia Miñana de Lovelace, chair of The UCLA Foundation board, to significantly bolster the law school’s Critical Race Studies program and its forward-looking efforts to promote Latino scholars and scholarship. The donation is the largest-ever single contribution to the program, which was founded at UCLA Law in 2000 and remains the nation’s only law school-based program devoted to Critical Race Theory and related scholarship.

The gift recognizes the retirement of UCLA Law professor Laura Gómez by establishing the Laura E. Gómez Teaching Fellowship on Latinx People and the Law. During her 30-year career as an eminent legal academic who focuses on law, politics and inequality, with an emphasis on Latino people and history, Gómez has driven scholarship as a thought leader, author of seminal books in the field, and co-founder and former faculty director of the Critical Race Studies program, or CRS.

“So much of Laura’s scholarship reflects my own life and journey,” said Miñana de Lovelace, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is of Cuban ancestry. “This fellowship will ensure that current and future legal scholars will take up her mantle and become the changemakers who further advance Latinx legal studies here at UCLA Law. Thanks in no small part to Laura’s leadership, CRS has, during its more than two decades of excellence and impact, become a signature part of the law school’s curriculum and reputation, and I am honored to add to its lasting legacy.”

The Laura E. Gómez Teaching Fellow will teach a course on Latinx People and the Law, conduct scholarly research on laws affecting Latino people in the United States, and mentor and teach students who have a demonstrated interest in how laws affect Latino communities. Each fellow will serve a two-year term, starting next academic year.

“I am so honored by Alicia Miñana de Lovelace’s generous gift to CRS, which will enable us to cultivate a crop of emerging scholars working at the nexus of Latino studies, race and the law,” Gómez said. “UCLA is progressing toward receiving the federal designation as a Hispanic Serving Institution, and law students will benefit immensely from a regular course offering on Latinx people and the law that covers topics including voting rights, immigration law and policy, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.”

Miñana de Lovelace is the immediate past chair of the UCLA Law Board of Advisors and is co-chair of the UCLA Second Century Council. She announced her gift at a March 2024 symposium that celebrated Gómez’s career.

Jasleen Kohli, executive director of the CRS program, said: “Alicia’s visionary gift to CRS will serve two vital roles. It will ensure the growth of Latinx legal studies here at UCLA Law and serve as a call to action, inspiring the growth of Latinx legal scholars.”

Gómez, the Rachel F. Moran Professor of Law, joined the UCLA Law faculty in 1994. She has served as a vice dean of the law school and the interim dean of the social sciences division of UCLA College. She was also a professor of law and American studies and an associate dean of the law school at the University of New Mexico. Her decades of scholarly work and community engagement reveal her deep commitment to civil rights and Latino communities. Her 2020 book, “Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism,” and her 2007 book, “Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race,” have drawn wide acclaim and recognition. In 2023, she was elected to the board of MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the most prominent civil rights organization advocating on behalf of Latinos.

Gómez has also been a dedicated mentor of students and future scholars in Latino issues, deeply engaging with them through her teaching and supervision. For many years, she taught the UCLA Law seminar Latinos and the Law, which considers the position of Latin American people in the U.S. vis-à-vis the American legal system. Gómez Teaching Fellows will continue her work by teaching the seminar to new generations of students.

In 2000, Gómez was only the second Latina law professor to earn tenure at a top-20 law school. But Miñana de Lovelace emphasizes that one reason for her gift is how growth in the ranks of Latino law professors and legal practitioners more broadly has been frustratingly slow. Hispanics and Latinos comprise 36% of California’s population but make up just 7% of the state’s licensed active attorneys.

“Boosting opportunities and creating meaningful change is never easy and takes a group effort — which is precisely what UCLA Law and CRS have been doing for a long time now,” Miñana de Lovelace said. “This is the perfect place to continue tackling these challenges head on.”

The contribution is the most recent in Miñana de Lovelace’s history of leadership and philanthropic engagement with UCLA Law. In 2020, a $5 million gift from Miñana de Lovelace and her husband, Rob Lovelace, launched the law school’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy. In 2021, another gift established the Alicia Miñana Chair in Law, designed to support a faculty member with interests at the intersection of human rights and immigration or migration law. The chair is currently held by E. Tendayi Achiume, the recent winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant, who was the first woman to serve as the United Nations’ special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. In 2013, UCLA Law presented Miñana de Lovelace with one of its Distinguished Alumni of the Year awards, for her outstanding contributions to public and community service.

“We are so fortunate to have Alicia Miñana de Lovelace as a leading member of the UCLA Law community, and this gift is just the most recent example of her enduring — and truly changemaking — partnership,” UCLA Law Dean Michael Waterstone said. “Her insightful dedication to legal scholarship, thoughtful advocacy and the raising of future voices has already made an indelible impact on the law school and our neighbors across California and the nation. I could not be more proud that she has created this fellowship in honor of Laura E. Gómez, a real trailblazer in the law, as an investment in the growth of Latinx legal studies and scholars. The successes that it yields will resonate for ages.”