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 FELLOW | FELLOWSHIP YEAR(S) | CURRENT POSITION |
| Idriss Paul-Armand Fofana | 2022-2023 | Assistant Professor of Law Harvard Law School |
| Chika Okafor | 2021-2022 | Academic Fellow in Law and Political Economy Harvard Law School |
| Zahra Takhshid | 2019-2021 | Assistant Professor of Law University of Denver Sturm College of Law |
| Nikolas Bowie | 2017-2018 | Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law Harvard Law School |
| Duane Rudolph | 2015-2017 | Associate Professor of Law University of San Francisco School of Law |
| K. Sabeel Rahman | 2012-2014 | Associate Professor of Law Brooklyn Law School |
| Abbye J. Atkinson | 2009-2010 | Professor of Law UC Berkeley School of Law |
| Vincent Chiao | 2008-2010 | Tyler Haynes Interdisciplinary Chair University of Richmond School of Law |
| Eleanor Marie Brown | 2007-2009 | Professor of Law and International Affairs Penn State Law |
| Hilary C. Robinson | 2006-2007 | Associate Professor of Law and Sociology Northeastern University School of Law |
| Angela M. Banks | 2004-2006 | Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law |
| Timothy William Waters | 2003-2004 | Professor of Law and Val Nolan Faculty Fellow Indiana University Maurer School of Law |
| Gavin Clarkson | 2002-2003 | Owner/Managing Director Native American Capital |
| Cristina M. Rodríguez | 2001-2002 | Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law Yale Law School |
| Laura Nyantung Beny | 2000-2001 | Earl Warren DeLano Professor of Law University of Michigan Law School |
| Stephen M. Rich | 2000-2001 | Maurice Jones, Jr. – Class of 1925 Professor of Law University of Southern California School of Law |
| Kenneth W. Mack | 1999-2000 | Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law Harvard Law School |
| Lino Mendiola, III | 1998-1999 | Partner, Co-Head of Global Energy Eversheds-Sutherland, LLP |
| Marc Spindelman | 1997-1998 | Isadore and Ida Topper Professor of Law Ohio State University Moritz College of Law |
| Ralph Richard Banks | 1996-1997 | Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law Stanford Law School |
| Alexa J. Smith | 1995-1996 | Director of Major Gifts NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. |
| Sydney Patel | 1994-1995 | |
| Richard Thompson Ford (Inaugural Lewis Fellow) | 1993-1994 | George E. Osborn Professor of Law Stanford Law School |