HLS Dean Martha Minow
In Sanders Theatre, Minow greets students in her first address of the academic year
"We searched the world for you.”
That was the message delivered by Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow to this year’s class of incoming law students at a welcome reception at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre on Aug. 31.
“You are here, each of you, for a good reason. You’re here because you’re talented, you’re passionate and maybe a little driven. You are the strength, the center of the Harvard Law School. It is a privilege, truly, of everyone on the faculty to get to teach you and to know you,” she said. “We picked you because you have the gifts to pursue your dreams and because your dreams can change the world.”
In her first address of the academic year, the dean welcomed the more than 700 students who make up this year’s group of LL.M., J.D. and transfer students. Calling this year’s group “extraordinary,” she offered examples of the talents and accomplishments they bring.
Among the members of this year’s class are 165 LL.M. candidates from 65 countries, 56 of whom already have advanced degrees; 559 J.D. candidates from 21 countries and 159 undergraduate schools; and 39 transfer students from 24 schools. They include international judges, a member of the U.S. national gymnastics team, a veteran awarded the Purple Heart and the founder of a foreclosure prevention company.
Minow told the incoming class that this is a “vital time to enter law,” with at least five major shifts going on in the world and producing technological, social, economic and political change. These shifts—in information technology, biology, globalization, resource scarcity, and mass population growth—generate fundamental questions whose answers will alter the shape of the human experience. “Lawyers’ tools are words, concepts and institutions. We have building blocks to help frame the debates and generate alternative solutions,” she said.
Read Introducing … Dean Minow.