Today Posts

In July, the Federal Communications Commission commissioned Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to conduct an expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world to inform the Commission's development of a National Broadband Plan.

On Oct. 14, HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren, an expert on consumer and bankruptcy law, received the 2009 Lelia J. Robinson Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. The Robinson Award, named after the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts bar, recognizes women who are engaged in groundbreaking work in the legal profession, and who have served as mentors and role models for other female attorneys.

On Saturday, October 10, 2009, Professors Mark Roe ’75 and Michael Klarman were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This year the academy, an honorary society of scholars and an independent policy research center, selected 210 new members for “pre-eminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.”

Far more is at risk in the health care reform debates than the well-being of the 47 million Americans who are currently uninsured, according to Jeff Crowley, the White House director of the Office of National AIDS Policy and senior adviser on Disability Policy, who spoke to an engaged crowd of about 60 students and others at HLS Wednesday night.

Ashish Nanda, Robert Braucher Professor of Practice at HLS, wrote “Lawyers should be recruited like doctors,” an op-ed that appeared in the October 13, 2009, issue of The American Lawyer. Nanda is the faculty director of executive education, and research director at the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School.

This op-ed co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 and Holger Spamann, “Reducing incentives for risk-taking,” appeared in the October 12, 2009, edition of the New York Times. Bebchuk is a professor of law, economics and finance and director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, and Spamann is co-executive director and a fellow of the HLS corporate governance program. Their op-ed builds on their joint paper, “Regulating Bankers’ Pay.”

President Barack Obama ’91 is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Cited for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples,” Obama becomes the third sitting U.S. president to receive the award, along with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

President Barack H. Obama ’91 nominated Dan I. Gordon ’86 to serve as Office of Federal Policy Procurement administrator. Gordon, who is currently acting general counsel for the Government Accountability Office, will be responsible for leading a key branch of the Office of Management and Budget.

Camp Julien is surrounded by reminders of Afghanistan’s past. The coalition military base--which sits in the hills south of Kabul, just high enough to rise above the thick cloud of smog that perpetually blankets the city--is flanked by two European-style palaces built in the 1920s by the modernizing King Amanullah. Home to Soviet troops and mujahedin during the past decades of war, the now-crumbling palaces are littered with bullet holes and decorated with graffiti in multiple languages. Uphill from Julien is the old Russian officers’ club, dating from the Soviet invasion and featuring a recently refilled swimming pool that overlooks the southern half of the city. The pool is said to have been the site of executions in the 1990s; the condemned were apparently shot off the diving board.

The family stories of black Americans and the findings of population geneticists make clear that Michelle Obama’s family history is far from unique. The vast majority of black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in North America have some degree of mixed ancestry.

The HLS Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, under the direction of Assistant Clinical Professor Wendy Jacobs and Clinical Instructor Shaun Goho ’01, has filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition v. United States Army Corps of Engineers. The brief was filed on behalf of Trout Unlimited, a non-profit membership organization dedicated to conserving, protecting and restoring North America’s coldwater fisheries and watersheds.

Held every three years, the Holmes Lectures at Harvard Law School (HLS) are the institution’s most prestigious talks honoring a most prestigious legal scholar. The lecture series was established in 1954 as a result of the 1861 bequest of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an HLS graduate and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932.



A group of Harvard Law School professors gathered on Sept. 29 for a panel discussion on the year-old global economic crisis and the prospects for recovery. 


In February 2007, Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program issued a report on gang violence in El Salvador, "No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador."

Diego, Anastasia and Juan (not their real names) are undocumented immigrants. They are seeking asylum in the United States because if they return to El Salvador, they say they will almost certainly be killed.

The op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, entitled “Unblocking corporate governance reform,” appeared in Project Syndicate. This op-ed is the most recent installment of Bebchuk’s commentary, which he offers monthly in a series of columns entitled “The rules of the game.”

Harvard Law School Professor John Palfrey ’01 will testify before the House subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security today regarding two pieces of legislation designed to address cyberbullying and other online safety issues for children. A live webcast of the testimony will be available beginning at 3 p.m.

President Barack H. Obama ’91 has nominated Marisa Lago ’82 as assistant secretary of the Treasury for international markets and development.

The following op-ed by Michelle Kuo ’09 entitled “The Lost Student” appeared in the September 27, 2009, edition of the New York Times magazine.

The following column by Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott,“Regulatory reform needs rethink,” appeared in the Sept. 21, 2009, edition of Financial News Online. Scott is the Nomura Professor of International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School and the director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation and Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems.