Protected: Martha Minow

Martha Minow has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981, where she served as dean for eight years. An expert on constitutional law, human rights, and legal advocacy for marginalized individuals and groups, Minow’s many books include Saving the News: Why The Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve the Freedom of Speech (2021); When Should Law Forgive? (2019); In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark (2010); Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good (2002); and Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (1998). Recent publications include Distrust of Artificial Intelligence: Sources and Responses from Computer Science and Law, with Cynthia Dwork, Daedalus (2022), and Social Media, Distrust, and Regulation, with Newton Minow, Nell Minow, and Mary Minow, in Lee. C. Bolling and Geoffrey R. Stone, eds., Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy (2022).

Now in her 43rd year of law teaching, Minow has taught over six-thousand law students, including many who have entered law teaching and public service. Her students have served as presidents of universities and colleges, deans of law schools, a variety of elected offices, and as leaders of nonprofit organizations.

Minow serves as chair of the board of directors for the MacArthur Foundation and co-chair of the Access to Justice project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Minow has served on the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Countering Violent Extremism and on the Independent International Commission Kosovo. She helped to launch Imagine Co-existence, a program of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to promote peaceful development in post-conflict societies. Her five-year partnership with the federal Department of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology worked to increase access to the curriculum with digital resources for students with disabilities and resulted in both legislative initiatives and a voluntary national standard opening access to curricular materials for individuals with disabilities.

Her honors include the Freedom of the Press Career Achievement Award from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (2023), the Sargent Shriver Equal Justice Award (2016); the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize, Brandeis University (2016); nine honorary degrees (in law, education, and humane letters) from schools in three countries; the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse, awarded by the College Historical Society of Trinity College, Dublin, in recognition of efforts to promote discourse and intellectualism on a world stage; the Holocaust Center Award; and the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award, awarded by the Harvard Law School graduating class.

She serves on the boards of the Advantage Testing Foundation, the Campaign Legal Center, the Carnegie Corporation, the SCE Foundation, and public media GBH. Previously, she chaired the John F. Kennedy Library Profiles in Courage selection committee, chaired the board of directors for the Revson Foundation (New York) and served on the boards of the Legal Services Corporation, the bi-partisan, government-sponsored organization that provides civil legal assistance to low-income Americans; the American Bar Foundation; the CBS Corporation; the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law; the Covenant Foundation; the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center; and Facing History and Ourselves, where she chaired the Scholars’ Board. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 1992, Minow has also been a senior fellow of Harvard’s Society of Fellows, the Russell Sage Foundation, Harvard University Press Board of Syndics, and acting director of what is now Harvard’s Safra Foundation Center on Ethics. A fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and chair of the implementation committee for Harvard & the Legacies of Slavery, her courses at Harvard include constitutional law, fairness and privacy, family law, international criminal justice, jurisprudence, law and education, nonprofit organizations, and the public law workshop. Minow served as dean of Harvard Law School between 2009 and 2017 and as the inaugural Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor. She was awarded a university professorship in 2018, the highest academic post at Harvard, and hence is one of two dozen individuals recognized for groundbreaking work crossing the boundaries of multiple disciplines, and authorized to pursue research and teaching at any of Harvard’s Schools.