People
Martha Minow
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On April 20, Harvard Law School honored two members of its community—Donna Harati ’15 and Laura Maslow-Armand ’92—with the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 to recognize commitment to public interest work.
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Located on the first and second floors of Wasserstein Hall—the heart of social and academic activity on the HLS campus—Harvard Law School's historic collection of faculty portraits provide a backdrop for the daily routines and informal interactions of students and faculty members.
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Feldman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
April 22, 2015
Noah Feldman, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, and an expert in constitutional studies, international law, and the history of legal theory, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining some of the world’s most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, humanities, and the arts.
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Daphna Renan joins Harvard Law as assistant professor
April 20, 2015
Daphna Renan, a scholar of administrative governance, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as an assistant professor in July.
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Funding civil legal aid: A bipartisan issue
April 14, 2015
An op-ed by Martha Minow and Sharon Browne. Although our economy is improving, the experiences of many truly poor people in this country remain very challenging. The legal rights of low-income Americans struggling with the many burdens of poverty must be protected, and that has been essential to the mission of the Legal Services Corporation since it was authorized in 1974 as one of the last acts of the Nixon Administration. Legal rights are not self-enforcing. The availability of legal advice and counsel can make all the difference to low-income Americans who are fighting to avert unlawful foreclosure, escape domestic violence, secure veterans’ benefits, or address many other legal challenges that go to the heart of their security and well-being.
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Closing the information gap: Romney cites increasing polarization in U.S. and the risk it carries
April 13, 2015
Mitt Romney ’75, former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee, visiting Harvard Law School (HLS) for a QandA session hosted by Dean Martha Minow, encouraged a renewed civility in politics and society, emphasizing the difference one person can make through serving others.
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Romney Emphasizes Importance of Private Sector Experience
April 13, 2015
Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke about the importance of experience in the private sector, the 2016 presidential campaign, and his time as a student at Harvard Law School during a public question and answer session at the Law School Friday. Law School Dean Martha L. Minow joined Romney on stage and questioned him on topics ranging from modern-day political polarization to finding a work-life balance. She later handed the microphone over to members of the crowd in a packed Milstein East Hall. Romney graduated from the Law School in 1975 and Harvard Business School in 1974.
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Closing the information gap
April 13, 2015
Campaigning for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Mitt Romney, J.D./M.B.A. ’75, decided he would spend one day every week doing someone else’s job. He cooked hot dogs at Fenway Park, worked at a day care center, took a turn on a paving crew. One day he hung off the back of a garbage truck making its rounds through the city of Boston. “It was really educational,” Romney said, recalling the experience for a Harvard Law School audience on Friday. “We’d pull up to a corner and there’d be people waiting to cross the street, and I’m not more than two feet from these people. And they don’t see you. You’re invisible. If you’re on a garbage truck, you’re an invisible person. “I thought, wow — we don’t see each other as we ought to in society.” The former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee, visiting Harvard Law School (HLS) for a Q&A session hosted by Dean Martha Minow, encouraged a renewed civility in politics and society, emphasizing the difference one person can make through serving others.
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A focus on food: Harvard Law School forum mines ways to protect, improve what we eat (video)
April 10, 2015
On March 28-29, The Harvard Food Law Society and the Food Literacy Project hosted the “Just Food? Forum on Justice in the Food System” at Harvard Law School, organized as part of Harvard’s yearlong Food Better initiative, created to discuss issues surrounding what we eat.
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Describing himself as a 'recovering,' though not yet 'recovered,' lawyer, Richard Tofel ’83, president of the Pulitzer Prize-winning non-profit news organization ProPublica, explored the challenges facing investigative journalism in the digital age at a talk he gave at Harvard Law School on April 3.
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Oneida Nation Representative and CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises Ray Halbritter spoke with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow on April 6 about the R-word...Oneida Nation Representative and CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises Ray Halbritter returned to Harvard Law School—where he earned his J.D. in 1990—on April 6 to talk to students and faculty about racial slurs promulgated by the names of mascots and sports teams in today’s America. The Oneida Nation and the National Congress of American Indians launched the Change the Mascot campaign two years ago to pressure the National Football League’s Washington “Redskins” team to change its name.
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In 2009, 40 percent of Harvard Law School’s entering class, according to data provided the school’s Admissions Office, arrived directly from their senior year of college, maybe even still sporting the odd T-shirt from last year’s big rivalry football game. It was the continuation of a years-long trend: From 2005 to 2009, between 39 and 45 percent of each incoming class were just recently undergraduates, with the remainder having spent at least one year working or studying elsewhere. But the next year, in 2010, the young students matriculating straight from undergrad only constituted 28 percent of the entering Law School class. More than two-thirds had post-graduate experience...“When I became dean, I directed our admissions team to give extra weight to applicants with experience since college,” [Martha] Minow wrote in an email. Now, since after 2009, roughly three-fourths of each incoming class of Harvard Law students comes to campus having spent some time beyond their college campuses. It’s a change Minow and Jessica L. Soban ’02, chief admissions officer at the Law School, broadcast as a way to enhance the Harvard Law School experience for students, allowing them to cultivate a better sense of their interests and bring a more experienced perspective to the classroom.
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A focus on food
April 8, 2015
The Harvard Food Law Society and the Food Literacy Project hosted the “Just Food? Forum on Justice in the Food System” at Harvard Law School recently. Margiana Petersen-Rockney, director of the Food Literacy Project, and Alexandra Jordan, a second-year student at HLS, organized the forum under Harvard’s yearlong Food Better initiative, which was created to discuss issues surrounding what we eat...“Justice requires that there be a possible vision of food quality and availability,” said HLS Dean Martha Minow, who is also the Morgan and Helen Chu Professor of Law, in her welcoming address. “We are all here because we want to see a more inclusive food movement. We are all consumers, we all have a say, and we challenge you to be an active participant.”
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Elizabeth Papp Kamali ’07 to join Harvard Law faculty
April 3, 2015
Elizabeth Papp Kamali ’07, a scholar specializing in medieval legal history, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as an assistant professor in July.
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Deans’ Food System Challenge finalists announced
April 2, 2015
This Fall, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, issued a challenge to students across the university to come up with fresh ideas for solving complex problems facing our food system in the United States and around the world.
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Law School Appoints Title IX Committee
April 2, 2015
Dean of Harvard Law School Martha L. Minow has appointed a Title IX committee to begin implementing the school’s new set of procedures for responding to cases of alleged sexual harassment, according to Law School spokesperson Robb London...After a group of 28 professors published an open letter in the Boston Globe that criticized Harvard’s policy in October, Minow appointed a committee, chaired by Law School professor John Coates, to draft a new set of school-specific procedures.
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Dehlia Umunna has been appointed Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She has been a lecturer at HLS since 2007, and is Deputy Director and Clinical Instructor at HLS’s Criminal Justice Institute (CJI).
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Law School Food Justice Conference Draws Crowds
March 30, 2015
A conference focusing on interdisciplinary examination of justice in the food system drew hundreds to Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall this weekend for “Just Food?,” a joint project between the Harvard Food law Society and Harvard’s Food Literacy Project. Featuring guest speakers, workshops, panels, movie screenings, and exhibits, the conference solicited over 500 registrations. Several notable guests spoke at the conference, including Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, who delivered a welcome address. Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, was originally scheduled to deliver a keynote talk on Sunday but was unable to attend, according to conference organizers...Margiana R. Petersen-Rockney, the Food Literacy Project coordinator, and Alexandra M. Jordan, a second-year Law School student and president of the Harvard Food Law Society, organized the two-day conference under the Food Better campaign, an initiative launched by the Deans’ Food System Challenge “to raise awareness about food systems issues,” according to its website.
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Jim Koch ’71, JD/MBA ’78, founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company and creator of its flagship Samuel Adams brew, shared the story of his unique journey with students when he returned to Harvard Law School on March 6 for a conversation with Dean Martha Minow.
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Focus on food: Twenty-two faculty deliver lightning lectures on research, realities involving what we eat
March 10, 2015
The Food+ Research Symposium, which was hosted by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard Kennedy School Sustainable Science Program, and the Harvard Center for the Environment, brought together 22 faculty speakers from eight Schools last Friday to deliver seven-minute presentations on the nexus of food, agriculture, environment, health, and society.
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2015 HLS Parody: The eternal curse of the 1L
March 6, 2015
The 2015 Harvard Law School Parody Beauty v. the Beast, which ran from Feb. 27 to March 3, drew sold-out audiences of students, faculty members, and visitors. Staged annually since the 1980s by the Harvard Law School Drama Society, the Parody serves as a creative outlet for many students at the law school.