PERSON: Melissa Murray

Professor

Melissa Erica Murray (born August 30, 1975) is an academic and legal scholar who is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU Law, where she has been a member of the faculty since July 1, 2018. Murray was previously the interim Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

Murray was born on August 30, 1975 in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Florida. Both of her parents were Jamaican immigrants. Her mother worked as a nurse and her late father was a dentist. Murray attended Lincoln Park Academy High School in Fort Pierce, Florida, where she played violin in two youth orchestras, was a contestant on Jeopardy! Teen Tournament, and was a nationally ranked debater, earning national runner-up for student Congress her senior year. She graduated in 1993. Murray earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in History and American Studies Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia in 1997, where she was a Jefferson Scholar and an Echols Scholar, a Lawn Resident, a Madison House volunteer, a university guide service historian, member of the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union, co-chair of the College Bowl, fundraising chair of the Colonnade Ball Committee, and volunteer at the Learning Needs and Evaluation Center. Murray then earned her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2002, where she was the notes development editor of the Yale Law Journal. She earned special recognition as an NAACP-LDF/Shearman & Sterling Scholar and was a semifinalist of Morris Tyler Moot Court.

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