DRUCILLA CORNELL

CORNELL--Drucilla. Drucilla Cornell, a widely influential philosopher and feminist theorist, died in Manhattan on December 12th. She was 72 years old. Drucila Cornell's many books and plays ranged across political and legal philosophy, ethics, deconstruction, critical theory, and feminism. She was Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature and Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University the State University Of New Jersey; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. She received her undergraduate education at Stanford University and Antioch College, then earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of California Los Angeles (1981). She is the author or co-author of nearly two dozen books, including The Imaginary Domain, The Philosophy of the Limit and Law and Revolution in South Africa. In 2008-09, she held the National Research Foundation Chair in Customary Law, Indigenous Values, and the Dignity Jurisprudence at the University of Cape Town. There she founded the uBuntu project, which has produced several books and a documentary film, entitled uBuntu Hokae. Her lifelong concerns with inequality and worker rights began in the 1970's through her work as a union organizer, first in Silicon Valley semiconductor factories, followed by organizing both electronics and clerical workers in and around New York City. She wrote about those years in a 2020 publication, There is Power in a Union: How I Became a Labor Activist. For the past 25 years, she served as a founding member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy. She is survived by her daughter, Sarita Cornell, her sister Jill Gwaltney, and brother Brad Cornell.