Minow is the 12th person, and the second woman, to serve as dean.
Martha Minow, the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, became the new dean of the Faculty of Law on July 1. Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust announced the appointment on June 11.
A member of the Harvard Law faculty since 1981, Minow is a distinguished legal scholar with interests that range from international human rights to equality and inequality; religion and pluralism to managing mass tort litigation; family law and education law to the privatization of military, schooling and other governmental activities. A widely admired teacher, she chaired the school’s curricular reform efforts and was recognized with the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence in 2005.
In announcing Minow’s appointment, Faust said: “She’s a scholar of remarkable intelligence, imagination and scope, with a passion for legal education and a deep sense of how the law can serve essential public purposes. She has played an important and influential role in the institutional lives of the law school and the university over the years.”
Minow joined the faculty in 1981 as an assistant professor. In 2005, she received the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence.
“I am deeply honored and humbled by the opportunity,” said Minow, the 12th person, and the second woman, to serve as dean of HLS. “I am eager to help the remarkable community of people at the Harvard Law School, in concert with colleagues across Harvard and beyond, continue to pursue the promise of the rule of law, the ideal of justice, the practical solution of problems, and ever deeper understandings of legal institutions and commitments.”
Minow’s appointment comes in the wake of the March confirmation of Elena Kagan ’86, the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law, as solicitor general of the United States after nearly six years in the deanship. Howell Jackson ’82, the James S. Reid, Jr. Professor of Law, served as the school’s acting dean in the interim.
| ’A scholar of remarkable scope’ |
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| Appointments |
| Assistant professor, HLS, 1981 |
| Professor, HLS, 1986 |
| William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Law, HLS, 2003 |
| Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law, HLS, 2005 |
| Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education |
| Senior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows |
| Acting Director, Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, 1993 to 1994, 2000 to 2001 |
| Representative Scholarship |
| “Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy” (2009) |
| “Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference” (2008) |
| “Living Up to Rules: Holding Soldiers Responsible for Abusive Conduct and the Dilemma of the Superior Orders Defence,” 52 McGill Law Review 1 (2007) |
| “Tolerance in an Age of Terror,” 16 University of Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 453 (2007) |
| “Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good” (2002) |
| “Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence” (1998) |
“Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law” (1990) Minow has written numerous books and more than 200 articles in legal and other journals. |
| Education |
| University of Michigan A.B. History 1975 |
| Harvard Graduate School of Education Ed.M. 1976 |
| Yale Law School J.D. 1979 |