Leadership

Dr. T. Anansi Wilson is an award-winning scholar of law and of literary and cultural studies, a racial-justice strategist, and an author of creative nonfiction. Their legal research is situated in legal philosophy, critical theory, political economy, and constitutional law. Their writing and scholarship focuses on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and resistance against, the social, political, and legal realities of domination in the West. Dr. Wilson earned a B.A. from Tufts University, a J.D. from Howard University School of Law, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. In 2021, they were honored by the Mitchell Hamline Student Bar Association as its inaugural Change Maker of the Year. In 2022, they were inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College.

Deanna K. Burns began her career at Mitchell Hamline in 2018 and has worked in various roles in higher education for more than 16 years, including teaching in the areas of business, management, and college readiness. She has master’s degrees in both business administration and management.

Burns is active in several diversity initiatives at Mitchell Hamline, serving on the DEI steering committee and executive advisory board and chairing the DEI activities and events committee. She also serves as a district ambassador with a racial equality focus in the South Washington County (Minn.) School District.