Camille Walsh (she/her)

Associate Professor

Camille Walsh

Director, Masters of Arts in Policy Studies
Faculty Coordinator, Law, Economics & Public Policy

B.A. European Studies, New York University
J.D. Harvard Law School
Ph.D. History, University of Oregon

Office: UW1-332
Phone: 425-352-3352
Email: camwalsh@uw.edu
Mailing: Box 358530, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011-8246

Teaching

Above all, I want students in my classes to leave with new ways of thinking about a particular subject, whether law, race, policy, gender or history. Though information is important, I believe the far more crucial learning process is for students to develop new methods of argument and critical lenses of analysis that they can then bring to bear on any problems or narratives they come across in the future. To this end, my classes focus on collective learning, involving workshop activities and document analysis along with exposure to numerous types of sources in readings, lecture and discussions, from songs, legal opinions, memoirs, film, government documents, art and more. I rely on small group exercises and often center classes on student-directed learning through case studies, reading selections, class facilitations, team presentations, ongoing assessment and other tools. My research focuses on education precisely because of my strong belief in quality education as a potentially transformative experience that should be accessible to all. I strive to bring that commitment into every classroom.

Recent Courses Taught

BIS 353 Human Rights in Theory and Practice
BIS 267 United States History from 1865
BISLEP 301 Law, Economics and Public Policy
BPOLST 511 Policy Process and Analysis
BIS 490 Gender Law and Policy
BIS 416 Constitutional Law
BISLEP 397 Media and Law
BIS 403 Washington DC Seminar on Human Rights

Research/Scholarship

My research is centered on the interdisciplinary intersections of law, inequality, race and class and the implications of particular historical processes on social justice movements around access to education. I have spent the last several years immersed in the ramifications for educational policy of unequal and racialized taxation and funding in K-12 public schools, and my book on this subject, Racial Taxation: Schools, Segregation and Taxpayer Citizenship, 1869-1973 was published by University of North Carolina Press in early 2018. Racial Taxation argues that the identity “taxpayer” has been far from neutral in U.S. history and law, and was deeply linked to white privilege, educational segregation and inequality throughout the 20th century and despite seemingly transformative legal rulings like Brown v. Board of Education. I have also begun research on my next book, Race, Place and Price: Tuition Segregation and Public University Financing in the U.S., which examines the limitations on mobility, access and opportunity in state-funded institutions of higher education historically and especially legally, and how students – and taxpayers – have both challenged and shaped the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion inherent in the distribution of public higher education resources.

Selected Publications

  • “Race and Residency: Mobility, Tuition and Public Higher Education Access” 61 History of Education Quarterly 3, (August 2021). Racial Taxation: Schools, Segregation and Taxpayer Citizenship, 1869-1973. University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
  • “White Backlash, the ‘Taxpaying’ Public, and Educational Citizenship” 43 Critical Sociology 2, 237-47 (2017). “Erasing Race, Dismissing Class: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, April 2011.
  • Racial Taxation: Schools, Segregation and Taxpayer Citizenship, 1869-1973. University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
  • “Erasing Race, Dismissing Class: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, April 2011.