Today

Rhonda V. Magee (M.A. Sociology, J.D.) is Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco, and is an internationally-recognized thought and practice leader focused on integrating Mindfulness into Higher Education, Law and Social Justice.  Born into a family steeped in the prophetic Black Southern Christian tradition, Rhonda is a student of Buddhist and other wisdom teachers, including Joan Halifax, Norman Fischer and Jon Kabat Zinn, she trained as a mindfulness teacher through the Oasis Teacher Training Institute of the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness.  She teaches Mindfulness-Based Interventions awareness and compassion practices from a range of traditions.  In October 2019, she received the Garrison Institute’s Insight + Impact Award.

Born in Kinston, NC to working class parents, Rhonda was a successful first-generation college student. A student and practitioner of mindful leadership, she is a former President of the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Professor Magee is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, she recently completed a 2-year term on its Steering Council.  She is a member of the Board of Advisors of the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness and the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute.

Professor Magee is a 1989 graduate, with Distinction, of the University of Virginia College of Arts and Sciences, and a graduate of UVA’s U.S. Army Reserved Officer’s Training Corps. She earned both a Master degree in Sociology from UVA’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and a Juris Doctorate from the UVA School of Law in 1993. 

A professor of Law for twenty-one years (tenured since 2004), Rhonda teaches courses dealing with civil actions for personal injury and insurance recovery; courses dealing with race and inequality; and a course she co-created a course called Contemplative Lawyering (which blends mindfulness-based stress reduction and other contemplative practices with lawyering skills) that has been taught continuously at the University of San Francisco for the past 10 years. Rhonda recently published her first book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming our Communities Through Mindfulness (September, 2019 by TarcherPerigee, a member of the Penguin Random House Group), which was named one of the top ten books released for the year by the Greater Good Science Center, and received similar recognition by Psychology Today and the editors of Mindful.org:

Our Favorite Books of 2019, Greater Good Magazine

My Favorite Psychology Books of 2019, Psychology Today

The Best Mindfulness Books of 2019, Mindful.org

(It is available at bookstores, libraries, and on audible.com.)

Weekly Questions: How can I claim my own body? How can I celebrate the path that brought me here while eliminating what no longer serves me? How can I set aside my own ego in order to build communally? How do I put my thoughts and intentions into practice and political action? Where can I practice healing and transformative justice within my spheres of influence? How can I practice radical love in my everyday life and interactions?