Distinguished Speakers

Martha Minow

Dean Emeritus, Harvard Law School
Vice President, Board of Trustees, Advantage Testing Foundation
J.D., Yale Law School
Ed.M., Harvard Graduate School of Education
A.B., magna cum laude, University of Michigan

Martha Minow has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981, where she served as dean for eight years. She writes and teaches about human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, digital communications, democracy, privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict.

Martha’s 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).

She co-chairs the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law for the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering and the Access to Justice project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served as vice chair of the Legal Services Corporation and as a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Countering Violent Extremism and the Independent International Commission Kosovo. She helped to launch Imagine Coexistence, a program of the U.N. 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.

Her honors include lifetime achievement awards from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (2023), the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Award from the Women in Legal Education Section of the American Association of Law Schools (2024), and 10 honorary degrees; she was appointed to the post of 300th Anniversary University Professor, one of 25 faculty members recognized for boundary-crossing work.

Martha earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as an editor for the Yale Law Journal. She earned a Master’s in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan.