Martha Minow

Walter J. Leonard, the chief architect of an admissions process at Harvard that has been emulated across the United States, opening colleges and universities to more women and minorities, died on Dec. 8 in Kensington, Md. He was 86...Martha L. Minow, the Harvard Law School dean, said the plan “had a ripple effect across the nation” as other institutions, facing demands for greater diversity, adopted similar ones of their own.

With the semester coming to a close, some Harvard Law School students are continuing their push for changes they say will improve the school’s treatment of minority students, about a month after a high-profile racially charged incident shook campus...On Friday, more than a dozen students hosted a “teach-in” in the lobby of the office of Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, on whom students have called to do more to address their concerns. For roughly an hour, students sat in the office and discussed the possibility of creating a critical race theory program at the school, according to Alexander J. Clayborne, one of the students organizing the protests. Clayborne said they spoke with Minow...In an emailed statement, Minow wrote that she has been meeting with students and faculty members to “ensure inclusive and fair consideration of any ideas for change,” adding that she met with students for several hours last week and again Monday. Law School Dean of Students Marcia L. Sells, too, wrote in a statement that she and Minow have been working closely with students to discuss “what processes can work to achieve change at HLS.”...Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe argued in an email that changing the seal of a school is very different from changing a title. “Renaming the position of ‘House Master’ to something less problematic like ‘Dean of the House’ is a lot easier than changing the school’s seal, which isn’t within the control of any dean or even the university president,” Tribe wrote.

Last Friday, students and staff critical of race relations at Harvard Law School issued a long list of demands to Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, insisting that she present a “strategic plan” for their implementation by 9 a.m. last Monday morning. When that unreasonable timeline was unmet, more than 100 students gathered to protest her supposed failure to address their concerns. The demands, made by a newly organized group called Reclaim Harvard Law School, are for major institutional changes...that cannot be met in a weekend. They can’t even be considered properly in that timeline...In an email to affiliates Monday, Minow described the Law School as “a community of many voices and hopes,” going on to write that the school has “an obligation to provide and protect the opportunity for all to participate, speak and be heard.” Hers is the right attitude.

On many campuses, debates over race, racism and higher education -- which took off in October and November -- are continuing. Among the latest developments: a plan to change the name of the football stadium at the University of Maryland at College Park, an art object at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that was originally viewed as an antiblack symbol of some kind and new demands for reform at Harvard University's law school...Black students at Harvard's law school have been holding a series of meetings with administrators. One of the students' original demands was to change the law school's seal, which is the family crest of an a major donor with ties to the slave trade. The law school is studying that issue. The students have now presented the law school with a more extensive list of demands...Martha Minow, dean of the law school, on Monday wrote to all students and faculty members, praising the kinds of discussions that are taking place and vowing more reflection on the issues raised by recent protests. But Minow did not endorse (or reject) any of the proposals. "Some students and staff have presented a list of demands," she wrote. "We are, however, a community of many voices and hopes, and we have an obligation to provide and protect the opportunity for all to participate, speak and be heard. We will work, as we always do, to seek broad input as we determine what kinds of reforms and actions will best promote our academic mission and build the community we aspire to be..."

At the third community meeting on race relations at Harvard Law School in as many weeks on Friday, students called on Law School Dean Martha L. Minow to produce a “strategic plan” to implement student demands they say will improve the school’s treatment of minority students by 9 a.m. on Monday...The students are reiterating some previous student demands, such as calling on Harvard to change the Law School’s seal, which students have criticized for its connection to a slaveholding family. They are also asking the school to establish an office devoted to issues of diversity and inclusion, require staff members to go through “cultural competency” training, and lower tuition and expand financial aid to “improve affordability and financial access to HLS for students of color, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, and otherwise marginalized students.”...In an email sent to Law School affiliates on Friday, Minow wrote that she will carefully consider the student demands. “I listened carefully,” Minow wrote. “I will do my best to ensure that we find ways to work together, joining students, staff, and faculty to address proposals and above all to strengthen this School and its possibilities to be better and to make the world better.”

It has long appeared in nearly every corner of the prestigious school. But now Harvard Law School’s official seal is under heavy scrutiny because it includes elements drawn from a slaveholding family’s crest. Following an outcry from students, officials from the school are examining the continued use of the seal, in what is the latest controversy over race and historic injustices on US college campuses in recent weeks. “Symbols are important,” Martha Minow, dean of the law school, said this week. “They become even more important when people care about them and focus on them.”

Harvard Law School Dean Martha L. Minow wants a special committee of faculty and students to gather views on whether the school’s seal, which features imagery from the family crest of a slaveholder benefactor, should be changed...On Monday, [Randall] Kennedy said in an interview that he supports Minow’s decision to foster a dialogue centered around questions about whether the Royall imagery should remain on the law school’s seal.“It seems like precisely the right posture for an institution of higher learning to take,” Kennedy said. “I think it’s a perfectly intelligent response.”“Let’s learn. Let’s think. Let's debate.”

Facing a group of expectant students in a campus lecture hall on Monday, Harvard Law School Dean Martha L. Minow did her best to mollify students who have called on her to improve campus race relations, demands that intensified after a racially-charged incident shook the school two weeks ago...“This is a time for serious challenge and serious action,” Minow said in prepared remarks. “It’s a time when we need your talents and commitments more than ever. I called this meeting to discuss efforts underway at Harvard Law School for changes inside the school and work to tackle the challenges in the world.” Those include reconsidering the use of the school’s seal, which some students criticize because of its connection to a family that once owned slaves; changing it, according to Minow, would require the approval of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body. Minow said the school also hopes to increase faculty diversity, while Marcia L. Sells, the Law School’s new dean of students, said she plans to hire a staff member to focus on diversity and inclusion, another demand common among student activists.

As college students across the country press their institutions to confront the experiences of campus minorities, law schools and their students and alumni are increasingly being drawn into the debates. On Monday, Harvard Law School announced the formation of a committee to consider whether the school should continue to use as its seal a shield that was once the family crest of Isaac Royall Jr., a Massachusetts slave owner who endowed Harvard’s first professorship of law. A group of Harvard Law School faculty will determine “whether the Royall crest should be discarded from our shield,” said the school’s dean, Martha Minow, in a statement. “Through that process, we will gain a better sense of what course of action should be recommended and pursued, and we will discuss and understand important aspects of our history and what defines us today and tomorrow as a community dedicated to justice, diversity, equality, and inclusion.”

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow has announced the creation of a committee to research if the school should continue to use its current shield. The shield is the coat of arms of the family of Isaac Royall, whose bequest endowed the first professorship of law at Harvard.

On the heels of an incident of racially-charged vandalism on campus, Harvard Law School Dean Martha L. Minow has appointed a committee to reconsider the school’s controversial seal—the crest of the former slaveholding Royall family that endowed Harvard’s first law professorship in the 19th century...Law professor Bruce H. Mann will serve as the chair of the committee, according to Minow’s email. Mann will be joined by Law professors Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Annette Gordon-Reed, Janet E. Halley, and Samuel Moyn...Two students and an alumnus will also serve on the committee.

In a rare public appearance on the evening of November 20th, John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, gave a talk at the New York University School of Law. The subject of the chief’s presentation was one of Mr Roberts’s predecessors: Charles Evans Hughes, the white-bearded, aquiline-nosed figure who steered the Supreme Court through the fraught New Deal era in the 1930s. ... Martha Minow, dean of the Harvard Law School, wrote recently that Mr Roberts has, “right from the start”, shown “mastery and deft management” in his leadership of the Court. A couple of somewhat intemperate dissents to one side—in the same-sex marriage case last summer, he wrote that “[f]ive lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage, [s]tealing this issue from the people”—Ms Minow’s assessment is just about right.  

Black slashes of tape appeared across the portraits of some African-American professors at Harvard Law School on Thursday morning, outraging students and faculty members and touching off a day of discussion about racial injustice at the school. In a statement, the school’s dean, Martha Minow, said that the portraits, which appeared on walls inside the building, had been “defaced” and that the Harvard University Police Department was investigating the incident as a hate crime. “This is my portrait at Harvard Law School,” wrote Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., on his Twitter account, along with a photograph of his portrait, with a wide piece of gaffer’s tape placed diagonally across his face...“I woke up to a bunch of texts,” said Kyle Strickland, the president of the law school’s student body. “As a black student, it was extremely offensive. And I know the investigation’s ongoing; we’ll see what happened, but to me it seemed like a pretty clear act of intolerance, racism.”

Harvard University police are investigating a possible hate crime at the law school after someone covered portraits of black faculty members in tape, according to university officials. Some photographs, housed in Wasserstein Hall on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus, were defaced with strips of black tape and discovered Thursday morning...Harvard Law School students quickly rallied in solidarity with their professors. A.J. Clayborne, who will graduate in 2016, told CNN that the response on campus was "fairly overwhelming" and that students "are shocked." He said that students met to organize in light of the incident..."There has been an outpouring of warm wishes for the affected faculty from Harvard Law students, some of whom posted signed messages of support," said Dr. Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a professor of constitutional law at the school, in a statement to CNN. "I am so proud of the students for reacting with love and kindness, for showing leadership, and for valuing inclusion."..."I was shocked to see portraits of black faculty members defaced today in an apparent response to the peaceful protest organized by Harvard's black students on yesterday," said Dr. Ronald Sullivan Jr., who is the director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute. "My shock and dismay, however, were replaced with joy and admiration when I saw the lovely notes of affirmation and appreciation that Harvard law students placed on our portraits."

When students and faculty arrived at Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall Thursday morning, they found a disturbing sight. On a wall of portraits of the law school’s tenured faculty, black tape had been placed over each of the African American faculty members. A second-year student called the tape “a hate crime” in a widely shared Blavitypost that included pictures of the portraits. Dean Martha Minow said that racism is a “serious problem” at the school. Police say they are investigating.

Black tape, stuck systematically across the portraits of black law professors, spurred on Thursday a police investigation into vandalism and a pronouncement from the dean of Harvard Law School that the school has a “serious problem” with racism. ... Law School professor Charles J. Ogletree, whose portrait was among those vandalized, said he was still waiting to learn more about the incident before making too strong of a judgement. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened and try to figure why someone targeted black faculty,” Ogletree said. Still, among students and other Law School affiliates reacting to the incident on Thursday, many condemned it through posts on social media and formal and informal gatherings on campus. Leland S. Shelton, the president of the Harvard Black Law Student Association, described it as “actually one of the most clear-cut, overt instances of very, very vile and disrespectful behavior from somebody”; second-year Law School student Michele D. Hall, who posted photographs of the vandalized portraits in a post on the website Blavity, wrote, “This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to a hate crime.”

Harvard University police are treating the discovery of strips of tape placed across photographs of black professors outside of a lecture hall as an act of hate, officials from the university said Thursday. In an e-mailed statement, Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School, said police are investigating who defaced portraits of black faculty members displayed at Wasserstein Hall. “The Harvard University Police Department is investigating the incident as a hate crime,” she said. “Expressions of hatred are abhorrent, whether they be directed at race, sex, sexual preference, gender identity, religion, or any other targets of bigotry.” A spokesman for the Harvard University Police Department said the incident remains an “open and active investigation.” Images of the marred portraits were shared on Twitter by Jonathan Wall, a third-year law student at the school. Wall said the pictures were sent to him from a classmate earlier that morning. “I was shocked. I was shocked, and I was obviously disgusted. Especially because it seems to be in response to yesterday’s day of activism,” said Wall.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan discussed what she described as “remarkable” changes in interpretation of statutory law in a conversation with law professor John F. Manning ’82 during an event at the Law School on Tuesday. Law School Dean Martha L. Minow introduced Kagan, one of her predecessors as dean. She noted that this lecture series is named after Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin G. Scalia, whom Minow described as Kagan’s “sparring partner, hunting partner, and friend.” The talk centered on what Minow called the “revolution” in statutory interpretation over the past several decades that has shifted the focus in the courts from common law to statutory law.