Recent Highlights

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  Kennedy argues that a 'Racial Predicament' still dominates despite the election of the nation’s first black president

  On the night Barack Obama ’91 was elected president of the United States, many people cried tears of joy. For many black people the tears held a special significance: They couldn’t believe they had lived to see this milestone. Yet their happiness also signified something sad about the moment, about the history of the country and about the problem of race in America that did not end with the election of the nation’s first black president, says Randall Kennedy.

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  Able Lawyering

  At least 675 million people in the world have physical, intellectual or psychosocial disabilities, and many struggle for basic human rights including education and physical safety. In some countries, disabled children are not allowed to enroll in school or are segregated from other children. Women with disabilities are more likely to be sexually abused, and their complaints often are disregarded by authorities. Many nations offer no accommodations to or assistance for people with disabilities. And even among families and well-meaning international aid organizations, the needs of disabled people are widely ignored or misunderstood. Co-founded in 2004 by HLS Professor William P. Alford ’77 and Visiting Professor Michael Stein ’88, professor at William & Mary Law School, the Harvard Law School Project on Disability has made great progress in just a few years in promoting disability human rights worldwide.

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  Educational equality for foster care children: HLS hosts a town hall (video)

  Children in foster care experience daunting challenges of stability and security in the school system, according to participants in the program “On the Road to Educational Equality,” held at Harvard Law School on May 24.

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  HLS’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute releases new report on METCO’s positive track record

  Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (CHHIRJ) and the Pioneer Institute have jointly published the first comprehensive review in nearly a decade of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), the nation’s second-longest running voluntary school desegregation program.

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  Scholars analyze the evolution of anti-discrimination law

  In recent decades, legislative bodies throughout North America and Europe have enacted sweeping laws to protect racial and ethnic minorities, women, the disabled and other groups who are victimized by discrimination. Perhaps not surprisingly, these efforts have encountered resistance—oftentimes successful—leaving anti-discrimination scholars and activists to ponder new strategies for dealing with an age-old problem. On May 6 and 7, a group of these interested scholars from the U.S., Canada and Europe participated in a Harvard Law School workshop that analyzed the recent evolution of anti-discrimination law on both continents.

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  In "Race and Justice: The Wire" - A novel approach to thinking about law (video)

  Over five seasons on HBO, the show "The Wire" tackled topics such as the drug war, wiretapping, corruption, and intergenerational incarceration—all topics worthy of examination inside and outside the classroom, according to Professor Charles Ogletree '78. That is why he established a new class based on the show—“Race and Justice: The Wire”—whose curriculum includes readings and discussions on drug policy, police practices, and legal tactics.

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  Alford in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Special Olympics still conveys the right kind of U.S. diplomacy

  In an April 18 op-ed published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor William Alford ’77 addresses how budget cutting in Congress threatens to undermine the Special Olympics—an organization whose history, according to Alford, “is one of how civil society and government working together can create results that neither could wholly attain on its own.”

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  ‘American ideals must be extended to Muslim-Americans,’ says Congressman Ellison, at HLS

  “Liberty and justice for all” and other quintessentially American ideals must be extended to Muslim-Americans in the face of anti-Islamic rhetoric in the nation, said Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim to be elected to the United States Congress, during an event at the Harvard Law School on March 28.

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  HLS hosts "Local 1330 v. U.S. Steel" (video)

  On February 25, Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left presented “Local 1330 v. U.S. Steel: 30 Years Later.” Conference organizers chose to focus on Local 1330 because the case demonstrates that workers can be treated as collateral damage in the corporate quest for greater profits. Co-moderator Harris Freeman, Western New England College of Law professor, said that its lessons are particularly relevant today as labor unions and fundamental workers’ rights are being challenged in Wisconsin and face similar risks in other states. The conference was also moderated by Temple University Beasley School of Law professor Brishen Rogers and SEIU Law Fellow Lela Klein.