Alumni Focus

Stephen Preston ’83 has been nominated to be the Central Intelligence Agency’s next general counsel. He is currently a partner and co-chair of the Defense, National Security, and Government Contracts Practice Group at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington, DC.

Rear Admiral William D. Baumgartner ’94 gave the closing remarks at the Harvard National Security and Law Association symposium on immigration and national security on April 3. His talk capped a day of panel discussions on immigration reform, border security and international cooperation and information sharing.

Through a new partnership with Harvard’s Office for Sustainability, Harvard Law School now has an on-campus sustainability coordinator.

President Barack Obama ’91 has nominated Charles Blanchard ’85 to be general counsel to the Department of the Air Force, Department of Defense, and Raymond Mabus '75 as the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, reporting to the Secretary of Defense

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August of 2005, the criminal justice infrastructure was among the many casualties; courtrooms were destroyed, personnel scattered and prisoners evacuated all over the state and beyond. But it brought attention to a system that was already so badly in need of repair it routinely violated constitutional norms.

President Barack Obama ’91 has nominated Helen R. Kanovsky ’76 as general counsel, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Dean of Yale Law School Harold Hongju Koh ’80 has been named legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State, President Barack Obama ’91 has announced. Kate Stith ’77 has been appointed acting dean of Yale Law School.

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58 was a student at HLS in the 1950s, she was one of nine women in a class of more than 500, and women weren’t allowed to live in the dorms. Still, “I found the professors endlessly stimulating and the discussion with my colleagues equally so,” she recalled as the featured speaker at “Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions,” a conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study co-sponsored by HLS.

Scott Blake Harris ’76, managing partner of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis in Washington, D.C., has been nominated by President Barack Obama ’91 to be general counsel at the U.S. Department of Energy.

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…