February 2008
Polikoff-Gautreaux Fellowship in works for M Law 3L
Feb. 11, 2008
Contact John Masson, 734.647.7352, jpmasson@umich.edu
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A recently awarded Polikoff-Gautreaux Fellowship will help Michigan Law 3L Kate Pomper continue her dedication to public service as she helps work through such pressing social issues as public housing, affordable housing, and public education.
The fellowship, awarded by Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, is designed to encourage lawyers and policy analysts to grapple with some of the thorniest issues affecting social justice in Chicago. It was created in 1999 to honor Alexander Polikoff, BPI’s longtime executive director, and Dorothy Gautreaux, a public housing activist whose court case reshaped federal housing policy and helped thousands of public housing residents live in non-segregated surroundings.
“I am incredibly excited to have the opportunity to work with BPI to ensure low-income families can access safe and decent housing and quality public schools,” Pomper said of her fellowship. “This is the work I hoped to do when I came to Michigan for the joint law and public policy program.” Pomper will graduate from Michigan in May with a Juris Doctor and a Master of Public Policy.
Pomper’s experience should help her. She worked on subsidized housing cases in Chicago over both her 2L and 1L summers. She was a Michigan Law Dean’s Public Service Fellow in 2007, working with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. In 2006, she interned with the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. Before law school, she worked in t he office of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley as a Summer Fellow, and she spent three years in Washington, D.C., working for two years at the Urban Institute, a social policy think tank, and one year at the National Women’s Law Center. Thanks to the Polikoff-Gautreaux Fellowship, Pomper will have the opportunity to broaden her skills in areas as diverse as public housing development, education policy, and affordable housing advocacy. The fellowship, which lasts one year and is renewable for a second year, rewards promising recent law school graduates and allows them to work on the wide variety of initiatives BPI is involved with. It also helps develop the experience and support necessary to continue that work once the fellowship is over.
More information about the fellowship is available on BPI’s homepage at http://www.bpichicago.org/index.php.
Feb. 6, 2008
Contact: John Masson, 734.647.7352, jpmasson@umich.edu
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan's senior senator is scheduled to deliver a Dean's Special Lecture February 18 as part of Michigan Law's 2008 International Law Workshop series.
The address, slated for 4 p.m. in Room 250 of Hutchins Hall, is expected to cover Sen. Levin's work as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, including America's standing in the world following what the senator has publicly referred to as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
He is expected to describe some of his experiences overseeing Bush administration practices in combating terrorism, and to discuss the implications of some of the Administration’s most controversial detainee interrogation policies for American security and international law.
A short question-and-answer session will follow the speech. More information about the Michigan Democrat is available at http://levin.senate.gov/about/index.html.