Hilary Levey Friedman, J.D., P.h.D., is the author of Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America and Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture. She is a Special Assistant Attorney General in the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office, focusing on the juvenile justice system. Previously, she was part of the Department of Education at Brown University, where she taught courses on topics like afterschool activities, sports, and qualitative methods. She also was a Fellow at the Taubman Center for American Politics and Society.
Dr. Levey Friedman served as President of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Women (RI NOW), as a member of the Public Policy Committee of the United Way of Rhode Island, as a member of the Platform and Issues Committee of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, and as a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA).
Dr. Levey Friedman grew up in the suburbs of Detroit where she graduated from Marian High School. As an undergraduate at Harvard she discovered sociology, graduating magna cum laude with highest honors in 2002 and writing her honors thesis on child beauty pageants. She then earned an MPhil from the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences as a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where her dissertation was about fashion and national identity. Following her time in England Prof. Levey Friedman matriculated at Princeton University, from which she earned a PhD in Sociology in 2009 as both a Spencer Dissertation Fellow and as a Harold W. Dodds fellow. During graduate school her research focused on competitive after-school activities (chess, dance, Kumon enrichment classes, and soccer). Prof. Levey Friedman completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University quantitatively studying youth sports injuries, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Motivated by the pandemic, her community, and research, she returned to law school, graduating from the Roger Williams University School of Law in 2024 (Rhode Island’s only law school), where she served on the editorial board for the Law Review, represented the school at the National Moot Court competition, and graduated magna cum laude. She is admitted to the Rhode Island Bar.
The mother of a fifth grader and a seventh grader, she spends whatever spare time she has reading (anything and everything!) and watching a variety of (reality) television shows and documentaries.
