Alumni Focus

President Obama has named three more Harvard Law School graduates to new posts. Tom Perez ’78 has been nominated to be assistant attorney general in charge of the civil rights division in the Department of Justice; Demetrios Marantis ’93 has been nominated to become deputy U.S. trade representative; and Emily Hewitt ’78 has been nominated to become the new chief judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Juliette Kayyem ’95 will be assistant secretary for intergovernmental programs in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Janet Napolitano announced today. In her new role, Kayyem will coordinate the department’s efforts with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.

Two more HLS alumni have been named to high-level posts in the Obama Administration. Nancy-Ann DeParle ’83 has been appointed director of the White House Office for Health Reform, and Jeremy Bash ’98 will be CIA Director Leon Panetta’s chief of staff.

Major David J. R. Frakt ’94, a U.S. Air Force JAG officer, discussed his ongoing representation of a detainee in the war on terror, in a February 23 panel discussion at HLS. The event was sponsored by the American Constitution Society, the National Security and Law Association and the Harvard Human Rights Journal. Copies of Frakt’s article, “Closing Argument at Guantánamo: The Torture of Mohammed Jawad,” which will soon appear in the Human Rights Journal, were distributed to the audience.

In commemoration of Black History Month, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) offered a tribute to William T. Coleman Jr. ’46, the former secretary of transportation and one of the lead strategists and co-authors of the legal brief for the appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, in the Senate on Monday, February 23.

We live in strange times. The federal budget deficit is higher than at any time since World War II as a percentage of GDP, yet the president and Congress are not in budget-cutting mode. Sadly, in the face of record-breaking federal spending, one uncommonly good spending idea has gotten short shrift: Use federal budget dollars to pay for more cops on high-crime city streets

A gift of $6 million from John F. Cogan, Jr. ’52 will be used in support of Harvard Law School’s International Legal Studies (ILS) program, Dean Elena Kagan ’86 announced today.

For those who work in the field of human rights during times of war, Afghanistan is the front line. For the past year, Erica Gaston ’07 has lived in Kabul as a Henigson Human Rights Fellow, assisting victims of the war and studying the conflict.

Lieutenant Colonel Gregory E. Maggs ’88 is a reserve officer in the Army JAG Corps. He is senior associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, specializing in commercial law, constitutional law, contracts, and counter-terrorism law.

Former HLS faculty member Anne-Marie Slaughter ’85 is the new director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department. She will provide Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with strategic policy analysis aimed at advancing U.S. interests around the world.

Michael Froman ’91 has been named deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, a position to be held jointly at the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today that Todd Stern ’77, a former White House assistant who was the senior U.S. negotiator at the…

Barack Obama ’91 was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States today. Chief Justice John Roberts ’79 administered the oath of office. Michelle Robinson Obama '88 became the nation's First Lady.

Since his election as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama ’91 has been tapping Harvard Law School alumni in putting together his team of top advisers and appointees. Numerous alumni have joined the Obama-Biden transition team and the incoming administration.

The first time (or two) Isaac Lidsky ’04 was denied a Supreme Court clerkship, he didn’t sweat it. He had overcome other challenges and wouldn’t let a few rejection letters get in the way of a dream he’d held since boyhood. “I used to joke that my rule for myself was that I’d continue applying until I was older than the youngest justice,” he says.

Oliver Oldman ‘53, Learned Hand Professor of Law Emeritus, died on December 5, 2008, at the age of 88. Educated at Harvard College (S.B. 1942) and the Harvard Law School (LL.B. 1953), Oldman taught at the Law School from 1959 to 1993.

Sheela Murthy LL.M. ’87 founded the Murthy Law Firm in Baltimore County, Md., in 1994. Her firm, of which she is managing partner and president, employs 14 lawyers who primarily practice U.S. immigration law.

The 2008 presidential race got off to an unusually early and competitive start. Few political observers are better equipped to analyze how this unusual campaign year will play out than two Harvard Law School alumni: David Gergen ’67 and Robert M. Shrum ’68.

Like so many of his classmates, when Jay Munir graduated from Harvard Law School in June 2001, he was headed for a job as a litigator at a large firm. If someone had asked him the standard interview question, Where do you see yourself in five years? his answer certainly would not have been, “Anbar Province, Iraq.”

For Paul Butler ’94, it’s been gospel music 24/7—ever since he joined the Gospel Music Channel in 2006, as vice president of business affairs and development.

As a teenager growing up in a suburb of Chicago, Susan D. Page ’89 already knew she wanted to live overseas: “I think it was an early reflection of my feelings about the U.S. and how I fit in. I have never felt like it’s really been home.”