Susan Farbstein ’04
New Appointments: Farbstein and Konschnik
Farbstein named assistant clinical professor of law
Susan Farbstein ’04, a leading practitioner in the field of human rights, has been appointed assistant clinical professor and co-director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.
Recognized as a national figure in Alien Tort Statute litigation, an expert on South Africa, and a leader on transitional justice and its relationship to human rights, Farbstein is a co-author, with HLS Clinical Professor Tyler Giannini, of several books, including “Prosecuting Apartheid-Era Crimes? A South African Dialogue on Justice” (Harvard University Press, 2009), “The Alien Tort Statute and Corporate Liability” (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2011), and “Corporate Accountability in Conflict Zones” (Harvard International Law Journal Online, 2010).
A lecturer on law at the clinic since 2009, Farbstein was named associate clinical director in 2011. Her current clinical practice includes an examination of the social and political tensions in Thailand that erupted into violence in 2010, and an investigation into human rights abuses committed by the Burmese military.
Prior to joining the clinic, Farbstein clerked for the Honorable Morris E. Lasker of the Southern District of New York. She also worked at the Cape Town, South Africa, office of the International Center for Transitional Justice.
In addition to her J.D., she holds an M.Phil. in international relations from the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of the Cambridge Overseas Trust. She received her A.B. in international affairs and public policy from Princeton University, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar and a member of the President’s Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
Kate Konschnik
A new policy director for the Environmental Law Program
Kate Konschnik, chief environmental counsel to U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), will join HLS on Aug. 1 as policy director for the Environmental Law and Policy Program. She currently serves as staff director for the Oversight Subcommittee on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. For seven years, she worked in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division as an environmental enforcement trial attorney, representing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and other federal agencies in litigation involving the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the federal Superfund program, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. She holds a B.A. in political science from Tufts University and a J.D. from UC Hastings College of the Law.
Elizabeth Bartholet ’65
Protecting vulnerable children
On May 10 and 11, the HLS Child Advocacy Program held a Prevention & Protection Brainstorming Workshop which brought together researchers, advocates, and practitioners from around the country to discuss strategies to prevent maltreatment and protect vulnerable children. The event followed last year’s CAP conference, which examined race and child welfare. The founder and faculty director of the program Professor, Elizabeth Bartholet ’65, spoke about the workshop and her longtime efforts to improve the child welfare system:
Q: What were some of the key issues raised in the workshop?
A: The overall focus was how we could do better by children in terms of the harm they suffer from parental abuse and neglect by intervening earlier and more effectively. We focused a lot on universal home visitation as a method of preventing maltreatment from occurring in the first place, reaching out to new parents during pregnancy and after birth for a couple of years, targeting all parents, not just high-risk parents, and offering them home visitors who could model and teach about parenting and link parents to other services that could help them avoid the kind of trouble that is correlated with child maltreatment. The other major theme was how we could make coercive child protective services more effective in terms of intervening early enough so that even if kids have been abused and neglected, they don’t end up being abused and neglected for several years.
Q: How has CAP influenced the child protection area since the program started in 2004?
A: I would like to think that the program, through events like the racial disproportionality conference and this workshop, and also through our teaching and the way we’re shaping the consciousness of students, is putting a healthy emphasis on the child’s rights and interests. Everyone in child welfare always talks as if that’s the central issue, but they haven’t been challenged to think about whether promoting family preservation to the degree they do really is designed to serve children’s interests as opposed to adult interests. Also, given that children’s legal issues generally are treated by the law as of little importance, I think the existence of this CAP program has made a huge statement that Harvard Law School takes kids seriously. It’s also very important that CAP educates some 200 students a year to recognize the importance of child-related issues and to look at them with a genuine focus on child rights and interests.