Kimberly Jenkins Robinson is the Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law and the White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Virginia School of Law. She also serves as a professor at both the School of Education and Human Development, and the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. She is one of the nation’s leading education law and policy experts and speaks throughout the United States about K-20 educational equity, school funding, education and democracy, equal opportunity, civil rights, Title IX and federalism. Robinson won the 2023-24 All-University Teaching Award at UVA, which recognizes the most dedicated instructors at the university. She serves as director of the Law School’s Center for the Study of Race and Law.

In 2023, Robinson launched the Education Rights Institute with $4.9 million in funding from an anonymous donor. The Education Rights Institute supports scholarship and engagement about a federal right to education, the key building blocks of a high-quality education and opportunity gaps in the delivery of those building blocks, as well as how school districts can best comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Robinson also is a prolific scholar who has published two edited books and a diverse array of articles, book chapters and editorials. She is currently writing a book for Harvard University Press on the need for law and policy reform that guarantees all students a high-quality education. In 2019, the New York University Press published her edited volume A Federal Right to Education: Fundamental Questions for Our Democracy. In 2015, Harvard Education Press published her book, edited with Professor Charles Ogletree Jr. of Harvard Law School, The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity.

Robinson is a member of the American Law Institute and a senior research fellow of the Learning Policy Institute. Before Robinson began her career as a professor, she practiced law in the General Counsel’s Office of the U.S. Department of Education and as an education litigation attorney with Hogan & Hartson law firm in Washington, D.C. (now Hogan Lovells). She also served as a clerk for Judge James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Robinson graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and with a B.A. in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar and a recipient of the University Achievement Award.