History

View our original 1946 Dedication

In the hectic days following World War II, the Harvard Law School Forum was founded by thirty returning soldiers as a memorial to their fellow students who died in the war.  Recognizing that civic responsibility required an awareness of current political, social, and economic issues, the Forum dedicated itself to inviting noteworthy individuals from all fields of endeavor to the Harvard Law School. It was hoped that the presentation of a broad range of current ideas would better prepare the Harvard community to solve the important problems of the future.

On March 8, 1946, the Forum presented its first program, a discussion of the war crimes trials.  Forum programs were soon being given regular radio coverage. In 1948, the Forum was charted as a nonprofit corporation.

Since its founding, the Forum has shown a proclivity for political prediction.  It presented talks by a freshman congressman named John Kennedy, by an interim Senate appointee named John Foster Dulles, by a rising Minnesota politician named Hubert Humphrey, and also by a relatively unknown Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter.

The Forum has also shown an uncanny ability to select and attract persons intimately involved in the resolution of international conflicts.  In 1952, Abba Eban speculated on the future of Israel. In 1959, Fidel Castro addressed a Soldiers Field crowd only three months after his rise to power in Cuba. In 1987, Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias described his plan for peace in Central America.  In 1984, Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega defended the Sandanista revolution.  Six months later, Arturo Cruz of the Contras voiced his opposition to it.

The roster of Forum speakers reads like a volume of Who's Who in the World.  In addition to the indivudals already mentioned here, B.K. Nehru, Margaret Mead, Donald T. Regan, Jimmy Hoffa, Strom Thurmond, Michael S. Dukakis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall, David Brinkley, Ed Koch, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Edward Kennedy, Marion Barry, Tom Wicker, William F. Buckley, Mike Wallace, Henry Kissinger, Scott Turow, John Cardinal O'Connor, Betty Friedan, Melvin Belli, John Cleese, Carl Sagan, and Elizabeth Dole have visited the Harvard Law School Forum. So have over four hundred others.

An invitation declined can be as famous as one accepted. In 1960, the Forum invited Nikita Khruschev to speak while he was visiting the United States as head of the Soviet U.N. delegation.  In an eight-page telegram, he declined because of travel restrictions. In his reply, which was reprinted three days later in the New York Times, he declared: "I am confident, however, that better times will come in the relations between our countries."

The Forum today is much like it was when it was founded.  It remains a nonprofit organization run entirely by students with financial support from the legal and business communities.  It offers an active and varied program of speakers and panel discussions, all of which are open to the public and receive extensive local and national media attention.  The Forum does not pay honoraria to speakers, nor does it endorse their views, yet it has been able to present intriguing discussions of many important current issues to the Harvard and Boston communities.

Forum programs are held at Harvard Law School in the Ames Courtroom in historic Austin Hall.  Adequate security is provided for our speakers and our guests.