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Since 1993, Reginald F. Lewis Fellows have gone on to amazing careers in the legal academy. Among the alumni and alumnae of the program are tenured professors at the top law schools in the United States. The following table provides detailed information about the current work of former fellows.

2023-24 Reginald F. Lewis Fellow

Hassaan Shahawy

Hassaan Shahawy is the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow at Harvard Law School.  He is a historian interested in legal philosophy and Islamic law, with a related interest in property and trusts and estates.  He is currently researching early Islamic debates about the authority of jurists to depart from formalistic reasoning by appealing to higher ideals (like justice, wisdom, and virtue), and the importance of those debates for understanding modern Islamic legal reform movements.  He is similarly researching the role that wisdom and virtue play in American law, and their impact on how and when the American legal system marks decisions by different kinds of legal actors — from judges, to presidents, to people — as legitimate.

Hassaan received a BA in History from Harvard College, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MSt and DPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.  He has also pursued traditional Islamic studies in the US, UK, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan.  While at HLS, he was a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow and served as President of the Harvard Law Review.

Hassaan has experience in impact litigation and direct services work on behalf of refugees, incarcerated and unhoused people, and people with disabilities.  He clerked for Chief Judge David J. Barron of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

LEWIS FELLOWFELLOWSHIP YEAR(S)CURRENT POSITION
Idriss Paul-Armand Fofana2022-2023Assistant Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
Chika Okafor2021-2022Academic Fellow in Law and Political Economy
Harvard Law School
Zahra Takhshid2019-2021Assistant Professor of Law
University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Nikolas Bowie2017-2018Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
Duane Rudolph2015-2017Associate Professor of Law
University of San Francisco School of Law
K. Sabeel Rahman2012-2014Associate Professor of Law
Brooklyn Law School
Abbye J. Atkinson2009-2010Professor of Law
UC Berkeley School of Law
Vincent Chiao2008-2010Tyler Haynes Interdisciplinary Chair
University of Richmond School of Law
Eleanor Marie Brown2007-2009Professor of Law and International Affairs
Penn State Law
Hilary C. Robinson2006-2007Associate Professor of Law and Sociology
Northeastern University School of Law
Angela M. Banks2004-2006Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law
Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
Timothy William Waters2003-2004Professor of Law and Val Nolan Faculty Fellow
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Gavin Clarkson2002-2003Owner/Managing Director
Native American Capital
Cristina M. Rodríguez2001-2002Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law
Yale Law School
Laura Nyantung Beny2000-2001Earl Warren DeLano Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
Stephen M. Rich2000-2001Maurice Jones, Jr. – Class of 1925 Professor of Law
University of Southern California School of Law
Kenneth W. Mack1999-2000Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
Lino Mendiola, III1998-1999Partner, Co-Head of Global Energy
Eversheds-Sutherland, LLP
Marc Spindelman1997-1998Isadore and Ida Topper Professor of Law
Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
Ralph Richard Banks1996-1997Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
Alexa J. Smith1995-1996Director of Major Gifts
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
Sydney Patel1994-1995
Richard Thompson Ford
(Inaugural Lewis Fellow)
1993-1994George E. Osborn Professor of Law
Stanford Law School