Biography
The daughter of American civil rights activists, Professor Doris “Wendy” Greene is a trailblazing U.S. anti-discrimination law scholar, teacher, and advocate who has devoted her professional life’s work to advancing racial, color, and gender equity in workplaces and beyond. Professor Greene is the first tenured African American woman law professor at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law and the Director of the law school's Center for Law, Policy, and Social Action. Her award-winning legal scholarship and public advocacy, which illuminate how constructions of identity inform and constrain anti-discrimination law, have generated civil rights protections for countless individuals who experience discrimination in various spheres.
A visionary, she is the architect of two new legal constructs recognized within anti-discrimination law theory and praxis: “misperception discrimination” and “grooming codes discrimination.” Her internationally recognized scholarship has also influenced the enforcement stances of federal, state, and local administrative agencies as well as human and civil rights organizations in the U.S. and abroad. The 11th Circuit and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have also endorsed Professor Greene’s published definition of race as a legal authority on the social construction of race and as a practicable definition for constitutional decision-making respectively. Moreover, the definition of race she proposed in her 2008 article, “Title VII: What’s Hair (and Other Race-Based Characteristics) Got to Do with It?”, (republished in 2021) is being adopted in history-making state and federal legislation known as the C.R.O.W.N. Acts (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Acts): the first laws in the nation to expressly recognize race discrimination is inclusive of the systemic discrimination African descendants encounter based upon their natural and protective hairstyles such as afros, twists, locs, and braids.
Professor Greene’s legal expertise also informed a landmark ruling in Arnold v. Barbers Hill Independent School District, which affirmed the constitutional claims of African descended male students who faced expulsion from their public high school for wearing locs. Significantly, the federal district court credited Greene’s testimony for solidifying how the enforcement of the school’s grooming policy infringed upon the students’ First Amendment rights to express their cultural and racial identity. In addition to serving as a legal advisor and expert in civil rights cases challenging race-based natural hair discrimination, Greene has advanced African descendants’ human rights to be free from racial and cultural discrimination globally—across four continents and before White House officials; the United States Congress, state and municipal legislatures, the United Nations, the French Parliament, and the House of Commons (England) as well as through developing accessible public education programs and publishing seminal legal scholarship. Greene’s dedicated advocacy for nearly two decades has fundamentally shifted how anti-discrimination law and policy treat the policing of African descendant’s natural hair styles in workplaces, schools, housing, public accommodations and other domains.
Teen Vogue, Now This News, BBC World News, The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, World Afro Day, among others have celebrated Professor Greene for her instrumental role in moving grooming codes discrimination from the legal margins into recognized civil and human rights law and policy. One of the nation’s leading legal experts on this global civil rights issue and founder of #FreeTheHair movement, she is currently writing her first book, #FreeTheHair: Locking Black Hair to Civil Rights Movements, under contract with the University of California, Berkeley Press.
Professor Greene has earned national and institutional awards for her impactful civil rights scholarship and advocacy. In 2014, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine named Greene one of 12 “Emerging Scholars.” In 2015, Professor Greene’s article, Categorically Black, White, or Wrong: “Misperception Discrimination” and the State of Title VII Protection, was conferred the Law and Society Association John Hope Franklin Prize celebrating exceptional scholarship in the field of race, racism, and the law. In 2022, Professor Greene was honored by the Association of American Law Schools as an inaugural recipient of the Deborah L. Rhode Award, which “recognizes someone who has great potential to make a mark during their careers as evidenced by their work that brings a novel perspective or call to action in legal education or the legal profession.” Since joining the Drexel Kline Law faculty in 2019, she is a three-time recipient of the law school’s DIVEIn Champion of Diversity Award, which celebrates “an individual who demonstrates diversity, inclusion and cultural competency in the law school and the legal community by promoting equal opportunity in race, religion, culture, and sexual identification and expression.” In 2025, Professor Greene also received a proclamation from the Office of the New York State Attorney General recognizing her exemplary commitment to human rights and equal justice, which have improved conditions for the people of New York state.
A dynamic teacher and scholar, Greene has inaugurated two Scholar in Residence programs at the University of California-Irvine School of Law’s Center on Law, Equality, and Race (CLEaR) in 2018 and at St. Thomas University School of Law (Miami) in 2014. Additionally, she has served as: a Scholar in Residence at Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law in 2015; the Frances Lewis Scholar in Residence at Washington and Lee University School of Law (Fall 2019); a Visiting Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law (Spring 2019); and a Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa and the University of Kentucky Colleges of Law.
Prior to joining the Drexel Kline Law faculty, Professor Greene was a faculty member at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law (Birmingham, Alabama) from 2007-2012. At Cumberland, she likewise made institutional history as one of the youngest women and women of color to attain tenure and full professorship and earned multiple awards for excellence in teaching and scholarship. With nearly two decades of experience, Professor Greene has touched the lives of thousands of students through her mentorship and teaching. Within the law school curriculum, she has taught numerous classes: Legislation and Regulation, Constitutional Law, Employment Law, Employment Discrimination, Equitable Remedies, Real Property and specialized courses on Race and American Law, Critical Race Theory, as well as Appearance and Grooming Codes Discrimination in the Workplace.
Professor Greene frequently provides legal commentary to media outlets such as The Washington Post, PBS News, BBC News, NBC News, ABC News and the New York Times. Notably, Professor Greene consulted on an episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” wherein her civil rights scholarship and advocacy were also showcased. One of few U.S. legal academics engaged in the study of comparative slavery and race relations in the Americas and Caribbean, she, too, is a highly sought-after speaker and consultant, having delivered hundreds of lectures domestically and internationally alongside advising private, public, and non-profit organizations on myriad matters related to civil and human rights, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Within the realm of higher education, Greene has delivered keynote addresses or endowed lectures for numerous institutions such as: the University of Arkansas School of Law, Howard University School of Law, Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law, University of Texas Law School, Northwestern University, Tulane University School of Law, University of Alabama, Washington and Lee University, Louisiana State University, McGill University Faculty of Law (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), University of South Carolina, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Southwestern Law School, and St. John’s University School of Law Center for Race and Law.
Deeply committed to public and professional service, Professor Greene is a Commissioner on the ABA Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Legal Profession and a Co-Chair of the African American Affairs Committee for the American Bar Association Civil Rights and Social Justice (CRSJ). She also serves as the CRSJ Section Liaison for the ABA Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Legal Profession and a member of the Executive Board of the AALS Section on Employment Discrimination.
Greene is a past chair of the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education and the AALS Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law and has previously served on: the Lutie Lytle Black Women Law Faculty Writing Workshop Program Planning Committee; the Executive Committee of the AALS Constitutional Law Section; the ACLU of Alabama Board of Directors; the 2015 American Society for Legal History Program Committee; the Birmingham Civil Rights Summer Voting Rights Series Steering Committee; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Human Rights Symposium Community Advisory Committee; the National Bar Association Law Professors Division Executive Committee; the National Chair’s Education Task Force for the National Black Law Students Association; and the Southeast/Southwest People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference Executive Committee.
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Professor Greene is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana (B.A. cum laude with Honors in English and a double-minor in African American Studies and Spanish); Tulane University School of Law (J.D.); and The George Washington University School of Law (LL.M.).