Faculty in the Spotlight

Gordon-Reed wins a MacArthur Fellowship

Annette Gordon-Reed ’84, an award-winning historian, is one of 23 recipients of the 2010 MacArthur Fellowship, more commonly known as the MacArthur “Genius Award.”

Gordon-Reed—a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award—was recognized for dramatically changing the course of Jeffersonian scholarship. She joined the Harvard faculty in July as a professor at Harvard Law School, a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow: “Professor Gordon-Reed’s remarkable work will be read for generations because of its originality, scrupulousness, rigor and imagination. We are thrilled that she has joined the Harvard faculty, where she has already brought the law school, history department and Radcliffe Institute into happy collaboration.”

She is the author of several books, including “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy,” which examines the scholarly writing on the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings.

Two more books, “Jefferson: A Reader on Race” and “Andrew Johnson,” are forthcoming. In addition to her extensive writing on slavery and Thomas Jefferson, Gordon-Reed is also the co-author of “Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir,” which was written with Vernon Jordan Jr. and received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

Gordon-Reed is the editor of “Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History.”

Whiting to join International Criminal Court

Alex Whiting, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Law School, will join the International Criminal Court as the investigation coordinator this December. Serving as the deputy to the chief of investigations, he will be responsible for managing and providing legal guidance and direction to all of the ICC’s investigations in this new post.

Alex Whiting

“This is a superb appointment for the ICC, as well as an unparalleled opportunity for Alex Whiting, whose impressive track record in international and domestic prosecutions and investigations is matched only by his excellent judgment and tenacity,” said Dean Martha Minow, who co-taught a course in the International Criminal Court’s prosecution efforts with Whiting. “We look forward to learning about his experiences, and we are glad he can bring his talents to this challenging and important effort,” she said.

Whiting will take on existing ICC investigations in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic and Kenya, among other countries.

Prior to coming to HLS in 2007, Whiting was a senior trial attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In 2007, he successfully prosecuted a case against Serbian rebel leader Milan Martic, who was sentenced to 35 years in jail by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague for atrocities carried out in Croatia in the early 1990s.

Neuman elected to the Human Rights Committee

Harvard Law School Professor Gerald Neuman ’80 has been elected to the Human Rights Committee, the premier treaty body in the U.N. human rights system. The committee monitors compliance by 166 states parties with their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is part of the International Bill of Human Rights.

Gerald Neuman ’80

The Human Rights Committee is composed of 18 independent members from 18 different countries with recognized expertise in the field of human rights. Members are elected to four-year terms by states parties.

“Gerry Neuman has not only deep expertise in international human rights law but also superb judgment, an impeccable sense of fairness and remarkable powers of analysis,” said Dean Martha Minow. “He will bring these qualities to the critically important responsibility of implementing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—protecting the rights of individuals and also advancing into practice the vision of human rights that member nations endorsed on paper. This is a terrific appointment for the Human Rights Committee—and a very proud moment for Harvard Law School.”

Neuman, the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School, is an expert on international human rights law, comparative constitutional law, and immigration and nationality law. He is the author of the book “Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders and Fundamental Law,” an analysis of the role of location and status in defining constitutional rights, and co-author of the casebook “Human Rights.”

Neuman will begin his term on Jan. 1, 2011.