Professor of Law
J.D. Harvard School of LawM.Ed. Ed.D. Harvard Graduate School of EducationB.A. Duke University
Philip Lee is a Professor of Law who teaches Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Property, Race and the Law, and Education Law. He came to St. John’s in 2023 from UDC David A. Clarke School of Law, where he taught for ten years.
Professor Lee’s research and writing centers on academic freedom, diversity and educational access, school law (K-12), higher education history and law, and property law and race. His work has appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, including Maryland Law Review (forthcoming), Emory Law Journal, Ohio State Law Journal, West Virginia Law Review, Utah Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, St. Louis University Law Journal, Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development, Harvard Journal on Racial & Ethnic Justice, Asian American Policy Review, Higher Education in Review, and Teachers College Record. He also published a book on academic freedom in 2015 and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession’s 2019-2020 Review.
Prior to starting his law teaching career, Professor Lee earned his doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he was a Harvard University Presidential Scholar and a student convocation speaker. While a doctoral student, he was counsel of record for an amicus curiae brief in support of the respondents in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that posed a challenge to race-conscious admissions in higher education. In addition, Professor Lee taught a course at Harvard titled Race, Law, and Educational Access.
Before starting his doctoral studies, he was the Assistant Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the admissions committee and led the office’s diversity outreach initiatives for four years. He also served as an adjunct faculty member at New England Law | Boston, teaching appellate advocacy to second year law students in the fall semesters for two years. Prior to his teaching and administrative work at Harvard and New England Law, he was a trial attorney for five years—working first as an Assistant Corporation Counsel in the Commercial and Real Estate Litigation Division at the New York City Law Department and later as an associate at a white-collar criminal defense boutique in Manhattan.