Visiting Scholar Program
Fall 2026 Visiting Scholar
Sarah Krakoff is the Moses Lasky Professor at the University of Colorado Law School, where she teaches and writes in the areas of American Indian law, Natural Resources law, and Environmental Justice.
Through 2026, Professor Krakoff is splitting her time between the Law School and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, where she is working as Deputy Solicitor General on federal and interstate water matters and environmental litigation. From 2021-2024, Professor Krakoff served in the Biden Administration as Deputy Solicitor for Parks & Wildlife in the Department of the Interior. She is a co-author of casebooks on American Indian Law and Public Land Law and has published numerous book chapters and law review articles in her fields. Professor Krakoff is a recipient of the Hazel Barnes Prize, the University of Colorado’s largest and most prestigious award for faculty. Before moving to Colorado, Professor Krakoff worked for DNA-People’s Legal Services on the Navajo Nation and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley Law School and Yale College.
Professor Krakoff is the 2026-2027 Carl F. Cranor Family Visiting Scholar.
She will deliver the following public lecture at 5:00pm on Monday, October 12th in the Big 12 Room of the Kansas Union:
The Upside Down Mountain: A Legal, Political, and Personal History of Grand Canyon National Park
America’s most iconic national park is known to Paiute people as the “Mountain Lying Down,” or the “Upside Down Mountain.” To most visitors, the Grand Canyon’s stunning rock layers appear to be the most natural and wild place in the lower forty-eight states. But the history of Grand Canyon National Park has a darker side, involving the dispossession of indigenous peoples, trade-offs that despoiled places outside of the Park, and other tales of hubris and misdeeds. Grand Canyon, in other words, is a deeply human place, constructed by laws and policies and imbued with everything—beautiful, terrible, and indifferent—that humans have to offer.
This free event is open to the public.
Visiting Scholar Program
The purpose of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students. Visits are coordinated by the KU chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and the University Honors Program, in partnership with relevant academic units on campus.
Recent visiting scholars include:
- Kelly Lambert, University of Richmond professor of behavioral neuroscience (Spring 2025)
- Trevon Logan, Ohio State University professor of economics (Fall 2023)
- William Moseley, Macalester College professor of geography (Fall 2022)
- Adam Winkler, UCLA professor of law (Spring 2022)
- Karen Fleming, Johns Hopkins University professor of biophysics (Spring 2021)
- James Sullivan, University of Notre Dame professor of economics (Spring 2020)
- Paula Stephan, Georgia State University professor of economics (Spring 2019)
- Mary Miller, Yale professor of art history (Spring 2018)