Lisa Albrecht

Lisa Albrecht, an activist educator and writer, is professor emeritus in the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota, where she founded an undergraduate program in Social Justice. Previously, she taught writing in the General College of the University of Minnesota for 19 years. She is the recipient of the University of Minnesota’s Outstanding Community Service Award and Josie Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award.

She co-edited (with Jacqui Alexander, Sharon Day and Mab Segrest) Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray!:  Feminist Visions for a Just World (2003), and co-edited (with Rose Brewer) Bridges of Power: Women's Multicultural Alliances (1990), She co-authored (with Rose Brewer & Walda Katz-Fishman),The Critical Classroom:  Education for Liberation and Movement Building (2007). She is currently working on a collection of interviews, Beacons in the Storm:  Stories of White People Who Work for Racial Justice. 

She served on the Board of Directors of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, a national movement building organization based in Atlanta for ten years. She also worked with the Gulfsouth Youth Action Corps in New Orleans, post-Katrina, where she was a consultant for a service learning summer program for middle school youth, taught by college students. She served on the board of Minneapolis-based Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), one of the oldest feminist anti-militarist non-profits in the U.S.  Currently, she serves on the board of Minnesota Minority Education Partnership; its mission is to increase the success of students of color in Minnesota schools, colleges and universities. She has also become a Circle-Keeper, someone who can help facilitate difficult dialogues, using the Circle process. She is currently on the leadership team of SURJ: Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national network of white racial justice organizers working to build a larger national presence of white people who fight racism.  She recently was a local co-chair of the 12th Annual White Privilege Conference which brought together over 2,300 people to the Twin Cities from April 13-16, 2011. She is also on the leadership team of - SURJ: Showing Up for Racial Justice (www.usforallofus.org), a national network of white people working for racial justice.

She was a member of the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights for twelve years, and was its Chair from 1997-1999.  She writes and speaks about feminist politics, especially linking the fight to end racism with working for economic justice, and ending homophobia, Anti-Arab racism and anti-Jewish oppression.  She has developed and facilitated over a hundred university workshops on feminist and multicultural curriculum transformation and pedagogies. She has also facilitated hundreds of discussions and given talks in communities all over the U.S. about human rights and social justice.  As an American Jew who identifies as anti-zionist, she has been active in Middle East politics, supporting Palestinian self-determination. She has traveled to Israel and Palestine and worked with grassroots activists, both Arab and Jew.

Learn more about her work at her new website https://lisaalbrechtsocialjustice.com/.