Jan. 14, 2025
Rhonda Magee, Esq.
Center for Contemplative Law and Ethics at the University of San Francisco http://rhondavmagee.com
About The Lecturer
Rhonda is a Professor Emeritus, and founding Director of the Center for Contemplative Law and Ethics at the University of San Francisco. Professor Magee is a leading mindfulness teacher and practice innovator with a focus on applying mindfulness to the most complex challenges of our times. She is an internationally-recognized teacher, guide and mentor focused on integrating mindfulness into higher education, law, and social change work. A prolific author, she draws on law and legal history to weave storytelling, poetry, analysis, and practices into inspiration for changing how we think, act, and live better together in a rapidly changing world.
For more than 20+ years, Professor Magee has studied mindfulness, its underlying origins in Buddhism, and its potential benefits and applications worldwide. As both a law professor and a mindfulness teacher, Magee has been exploring the integration of mindfulness into teaching, learning, and social engagement, including in support of personal and collective healing, activism, and leadership. She has written extensively on how mindfulness and other contemplative practices support engagement in the world in the face of the multiple interlocking challenges of our times, including climate distress, migration, political polarization, migration war, and their effects on us all. Along the way, she’s become a sought-after Keynote speaker and thought leader, inspiring others to explore the integration of socially engaged mindfulness in research and applications inside schools, workplaces, communities, and beyond.
In 2022, Rhonda was named the inaugural Director of the University of San Francisco School of Law’s Center for Contemplative Law and Ethics. In addition to providing a home for Rhonda’s innovative course on Contemplative Lawyering, school-based meditation offerings, Law School Orientation, and Continuing Legal Education programming, the Center will explore and develop research-aligned mindfulness practices, providing students, alumni, and community members with essential tools to sustain lawyers’ professional responsibility commitments. The Center’s programming will strengthen and deepen awareness of the knowledge, skills, and values of law practice and help provide clarity to apply them with mindfulness amid today’s most challenging conflicts and crises.
Professor Magee’s current research and practice focus is on the intersection of mindfulness and the African-American aesthetic and practice approach that emerges from the Black Social Gospel tradition – which she calls Soulfulness.
Practice Area(s)
Administrative
Legal Research & Writing
Education
University of Virginia School of Law J.D., 1993
University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts & Sciences M.A., 1993
University of Virginia College of Arts & Sciences B.A. with Distinction, 1989
Distinguished Majors Thesis: The Socioeconomic Effects of Disability
