Justice Thomas will teach seminar on race, equality at University of Texas at Austin
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas answers questions during a visit to the University of Texas at Austin on April 15, 2026. (Photo by Eric Gay/The Associated Press)
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will lead an undergraduate seminar at the University of Texas at Austin on race, equality and political thought in February.
Law.com has the story.
The one-credit-hour seminar, “CIV 166 Equality and the New Birth of Freedom,” will include two hours of lecture daily from Feb. 1 to Feb. 5, 2027, for 17 students. Sixty-five applied.
Students will also meet with Justin Dyer, the dean of the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, during the seminar that follows American political thought from the nation’s founding through the Civil War to the present.
Readings include the writings and speeches of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as civil rights leaders the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The course examines how questions of race and equality show up in recent Supreme Court decisions.
Thomas previously spoke to students and legal professionals at the University of Texas at Austin in April, making the case that the Supreme Court’s failures have stemmed from a lack of courage, not a lack of understanding, and he discussed Plessy v. Ferguson, a 1896 ruling that upheld government-enforced segregation.
Thomas, who joined the Supreme Court in 1991, is its longest-serving current member.
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