Prosecution as Public Service: Navigating a Career at the Intersection of Civil Rights & Gender Justice Enforcement and Learning to Wield Power Fairly & Effectively

Prosecutors tend to be unpopular and often distrusted, unless popular culture agrees with who is being prosecuted (which isn’t how prosecutorial decisions work). Sometimes there is good reason for distrust, but despite that, it is hardly wise to paint with a broad brush and vilify or glorify an entire group of public servants. Join Wasserstein Fellow Fara Gold as she discusses why being a prosecutor means upholding the Constitution, wielding power fairly, and doing so with humanity. She will explain why she cringes when she reads about prosecutors who have “notched wins” or “scored convictions,” because that isn’t how principled prosecutors talk about their careers. Fara will discuss this in the context of her own career first as a state prosecutor, then as a federal prosecutor for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division where she specialized in prosecuting law enforcement sexual misconduct, and now as an attorney with the Office on Violence Against Women where she focuses on policy and training to address gender-based violence.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below. Open to the HLS community.

Fara Gold currently serves as an attorney advisor for the Office on Violence Against Women of the United States Department of Justice, where she spearheaded the development of DOJ’s Framework for Prosecutors to Strengthen Our National Response to Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence and serves as an expert on investigating and prosecuting sexual assault. Prior to her current role, Fara served as Special Litigation Counsel and Senior Sex Crimes Counsel for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division for nearly 14 years, where she traveled throughout the country prosecuting bias-motivated crimes and law enforcement misconduct cases, developing national expertise in prosecuting civil rights offenses involving sexual misconduct. From 2022-2023, Fara also served as Senior Counsel on Sexual Misconduct to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division where she played an integral role in the Deputy Attorney General’s efforts to root out sexual abuse within the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Before joining DOJ, Fara served as an Assistant State Attorney for the Broward County State Attorney’s Office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Fara also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center where she teaches, “Prosecuting Sex Crimes & Vindicating Constitutional Rights.”