Martha Louise Minow (born December 6, 1954)  is the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and the Dean of Harvard Law School.  She has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981, where her courses have included civil procedure, constitutional law, family law, international criminal justice, jurisprudence, law and education, nonprofit organizations, and the public law workshop. An expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict.  Minow was one of the candidates  mentioned to replace U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens upon his retirement. This honor, however, went to Elena Kagan, Minow's predecessor as dean of Harvard Law School. 
 

Biography

Minow is the daughter of former Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow and his wife Josephine Baskin Minow. After graduating from New Trier Township High School in 1972 and completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan in 1975, Minow received a master’s degree in education from Harvard (1976) and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School (1979),  where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
 

After graduating law school, Minow clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. 
 

She joined the Harvard Law faculty as an assistant professor in 1981, was promoted to professor in 1986, was named the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Law in 2003, and became the Jeremiah Smith Jr., Professor of Law in 2005. She became Dean of Harvard Law School July 1, 2009.  She is also a lecturer in the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
 

Works, honors, and recognition

She served on the Independent International Commission Kosovo and helped to launch Imagine Co-existence, 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 for students with disabilities and resulted in both legislative initiatives and a voluntary national standard opening access to curricular materials for individuals with disabilities. She has worked on the Divided Cities initiative which is building an alliance of global cities dealing with ethnic, religious, or political divisions. 
 

Her honors include: the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award, selected by the Harvard Law School graduating class of 2005, the Holocaust Center Award, 2006, and Honorary Doctorates from Northwestern University (Law), the Jewish Theological Seminary (Law), Dominican University (Humane Letters), Hebrew College (Humane Letters), McGill University (Law), the University of Toronto (Law), and Wheelock College (Education). 
 

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama was asked why he had chosen a career of public service rather than corporate law. He responded, "When I was at Harvard Law School I had a teacher who changed my life -- Martha Minow."  In August 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Dean Minow to the board of the Legal Services Corporation, a bi-partisan, government-sponsored organization that provides civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. The U.S. Senate confirmed her appointment on March 19, 2010 and she now serves as Vice-Chair and co-chair of its Pro Bono Task Force. 
 

She is a former member of the board of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center, and former chair of the Scholar’s Board of Facing History and Ourselves. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 1992, Minow has also been a senior fellow of Harvard’s Society of Fellows, a member of Harvard University Press Board of Syndics, a senior fellow and twice acting director of what is now Harvard’s Safra Foundation Center on Ethics, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society. She has delivered more than 70 named or endowed lectures and key-note addresses. 
 

She co-chaired the Law School’s curricular reform committee from 2003 to 2006, an effort that led to significant innovation in the first-year curriculum as well as new programs of study for second- and third-year J.D. students.