In the thirty years since the concept was theorized by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality has become a staple of woke Tinder profiles, has been touted by everyone from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to Sabrina the Teenage Witch and even served as the inspiration of a recent True Detective episode. All the while, the right wing has seized upon intersectionality as the apotheosis of everything wrong with the so-called snowflake generation.

But what is intersectionality, exactly, and how does its popular understanding square with its scholarly beginning?

Many of the most pervasive myths about intersectionality reflect an unwillingness to engage with the substance of intersectionality as a theory, and a haste to invoke straw hysteria on college campuses as conclusive evidence of intersectionality’s supposed moral and intellectual pitfalls. The theory’s detractors often confuse intersectionality with Oppression Olympics, identity politics on steroids, a dogma brandished with cultic fervor or even a justification for anti-Semitism, to name only some of the most persistent distortions. Presented by the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS) and the African American Policy Forum (AAPF), Mythbusting Intersectionality is a convening of leading thinkers in activism, media, academia and law that will dispel these misconceptions. Join us for a provocative discussion intended to uplift the ways in which intersectionality can be mobilized to name, trace and organize against the compounded discrimination that is endemic to today’s social landscape and the overlapping systems of power that undergird it.

The multidisciplinary panel will include Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, The Atlantic staff writer Hannah Giorgis, Yale Professor Daniel Martinez HoSang, UC Santa Barbara feminist scholar Professor Barbara Tomlinson, feminist writer Sarah Seltzer and civil rights attorney Ezra Young.

Kimberlé Crenshaw is a leading authority in the area of Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. Her articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, National Black Law Journal, Stanford Law Review and Southern California Law Review. She is the co-founder/executive director of the African American Policy Forum and is also the host of the new podcast, Intersectionality Matters.

Hannah Giorgis is an Ethiopian-American writer based in New York City. She is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers culture. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed and Pitchfork amongst others.

Daniel HoSang is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University. His next book, with Joseph Lowndes, is, Producers, Parasites and Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (University of Minnesota Press).

Sarah Seltzer is the digital editor of the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith. The former editor of Kveller and Deputy Editor of Flavorwire, she is a widely published journalist, essayist, and book critic. She also writes fiction.

Ezra Young is a nationally recognized civil rights attorney based in New York City. Ezra's work centers on trans rights, with a focus on rights of recognition, employment protections, and health care and insurance coverage issues. Ezra is a graduate of Columbia Law School where he was Executive Managing Editor of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and Online & Consulting Editor of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law.