women leaders

Register now for inaugural Women’s Leadership in Academia Conference, to be held July 19-20 at Georgia Law

/ Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

Women law professors, librarians, and clinicians in, or interested in, leadership positions are invited to take part in the inaugural Women’s Leadership in Academia Conference, to be held July 19-20, 2018, at my home institution, the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, about 65 miles northeast of Atlanta.

Keynote speakers will be Kellye Testy, former Dean of the University of Washington School of Law, who serves as President and CEO of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC is a conference sponsor), and Professor Libby V. Morris, Director of the Institute of Higher Education and Zell B. Miller Distinguished Professor of Higher Education, as well as a former interim provost, at the University of Georgia.

Session speakers will include IntLawGrrls contributor Hari M. Osofsky, Dean at Penn State Law; Sonja West and Emma Hetherington, Georgia Law; RonNell Anderson Jones, Utah Law; Dahlia Lithwick, Slate; Mary-Rose Papandrea, North Carolina Law; Lisa Radtke Bliss,  Andrea A. Curcio, and Jessica Gabel Cino, Georgia State Law; Raye Rawls, University of Georgia J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development; Claire Robinson May, Cleveland State Law; KerryAnn O’Meara, University of Maryland College of Education;  Tim McFeeley, Isaacson, Miller; Lucy A. Leske, Witt/Kieffer; Laura Rosenbury, Dean at Florida Law; Hillary Sale, Washington University-St. Louis Law; and Melanie Wilson, Paula Schaefer, and Joy Radice,  Tennessee Law.

The conference will focus “on building skills and providing tools and information that are directly applicable to women in legal education looking to be leaders within the academy.” As detailed in the full conference program, session topics will include:

  • #MeToo and the Legal Academy
  • Exploring the Value of Female Mentoring Relationships to Cultivate Law School Leadership
  • Strategies for Conflict Management and Dialogue
  • Engendering Equality Within Your Institution: Establishing a Women’s Committee to Achieve Meaningful Change
  • Addressing Gender Disparities in Institutional Service Workloads
  • Academic Search Process Panel
  • Negotiation Strategies
  • Leadership Challenges and Solutions over the Course of a Career
  • Deans Panel

For registration and other details, see here. And act now: the hotel bloc will close in a few days.

Women’s leadership in academia focus of Georgia Law event January 5, AALS annual meeting

/ Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

Law professors, librarians, and clinicians “interested in advancing women into leadership positions within the academy” are invited to take part in a special University of Georgia School of Law reception at next week’s annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.

As described in the AALS program, the event will be held January 5, 2018 from 5:30-7:00 pm at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, Level 4, America’s Cup CD, San Diego, California.

University of Georgia Provost Pamela Whitten (left) will give a presentation at the reception, which will also feature breakout discussions led by Kristi L. Bowman (right), Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University College of Law, and Usha R. Rodrigues (below right), Associate Dean for Faculty Development at the University of Georgia School of Law.

o-sponsoring are the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education and the AALS Section Associate Deans for Academic Affairs and Research.

Kudos to my colleague Usha, the principal organizer of this event. It’s a followup to the Roundtable Discussion on Women’s Leadership in Legal Academia that Georgia Law hosted at last year’s AALS one of many Georgia Women in Law Lead (Georgia WILL) events last academic year. As Usha explains in her invitation:

“This event will kick off programming for a new Women in Academic Leadership Initiative. In conjunction with the law schools of Brigham Young University, Michigan State University, UCLA, University of Tennessee, University of Virginia, and Yale University, we are spearheading a program that will feature regional leadership conferences aimed at preparing women in legal education for leadership opportunities and advancement.

“This initiative is in response to valuable feedback from the Roundtable Discussion on Women’s Leadership in Legal Academia we held during last year’s AALS Annual Meeting. Our colleagues expressed a need for a sustained project to foster women’s leadership. Based on that feedback, we have been developing a conference to address needs such as negotiation skills, conflict management, and effective communication. We are also creating panels to discuss various leadership roles and the competitive search process. The inaugural conference, to be held at the University of Georgia on July 19-20, 2018 …”

Details here and here.

IntLawGrrl Hari M. Osofsky named Penn State Law and International Affairs dean

/ Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

osofskywebphotoDelighted to see that a charter member of IntLawGrrls blog, Dr. Hari M. Osofsky, has been named the new dean of Penn State Law and the School of International Affairs in University Park, Pennsylvania. Pending approval by that university’s trustees, Hari is due to start the new post July 1.

1087104_23282The appointment marks the latest step in a distinguished career. Hari’s currently at the University of Minnesota Law School, where she serves as the Robins Kaplan Professor of Law, faculty director of the Energy Transition Lab, and director of the Joint Degree Program in Law, Science and Technology; she’s also affiliated with other University of Minnesota units. In addition, Hari has held academic appointments at Washington & Lee University School of Law, the University of Oregon School of Law, and Whittier Law School in the United States, along with Sun Yat-sen University in China.

Hari earned a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oregon and a J.D. from Yale Law School, and served as a law clerk to Judge Dorothy Nelson, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She’s won awards from and been a leader in multiple professional organizations, including: the American Society of International Law; the International Law Association; the International Bar Association; the Association for Law, Property, and Society;  the Association of American  Law Schools; and the Society of American Law Teachers. She’s published more than 50 books, chapters, and articles,  focusing on improving governance and addressing injustice in energy and climate change regulation.

Hari made her blog debut on February 17, 2007, during IntLawGrrls’ gestational phase. She wrote a “First Missive from Mata Hari,” a title that recalled our initial use of pen names. Since then, she’s filed many posts (here and here), often on the issues of international environmental law, policy, and theory that animate her scholarship.

We look forward to celebrating in person with Hari this March at IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference. Till then, we’re proud to offer our

Heartfelt congratulations!

Women’s leadership in academia: Georgia Law session January 5 at AALS meeting in San Francisco

/ Diane Marie Amann / 1 Comment
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Accompanying us to San Francisco will be this Georgia WILL banner. It depicts Edith House, co-valedictorian of the Georgia Law Class of 1925 and Florida’s 1st woman U.S. Attorney. Our Women Law Students Association hosts a lecture in her honor each year; slated to speak at the 35th annual Edith House Lecture, on March 2, 2017, is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Women’s roles will be the focus of the University of Georgia School of Law Roundtable Discussion on Women’s Leadership in Legal Academia from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Thursday, January 5, 2017, at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in San Francisco.

This brainstorming session for women law professors, clinicians, or librarians  who are or are interested in becoming administrators within law schools and universities at large. Among other things, we’ll explore whether there’s interest in a sustained project to foster women’s leadership in legal academia, and if so, what should be the contours of that project.

Taking part in the discussion will be 4 Georgia Law administrators: Lori A. Ringhand, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and  J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law; Usha Rodrigues, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and M.E. Kilpatrick Chair of Corporate Finance & Securities Law; Carol A. Watson, Director of the Alexander Campbell King Law Library; and yours truly, Diane Marie Amann, Associate Dean for International Programs & Strategic Initiatives and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law. Also featured will be another IntLawGrrls contributor, Monika Kalra Varma –  now an executive leadership consultant, she served for the last five years as Executive Director of the District of Columbia Bar Pro Bono Program.

We’ll be hosting a reception as part of the discussion, and look forward to conversation with many of our counterparts throughout the AALS community. And we welcome the cosponsorship of the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education.

This event is part of our law school’s ongoing initiative, Georgia WILL (Georgia Women in Law Lead). It began in August with a celebration of the centenary date on which the legislature authorized women to practice law in Georgia, and has continued with lectures by Georgia Law alumnae and other prominent women; among them, a federal judge, a former U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, and a corporate general counsel. The January 5 session will kick off a half dozen spring semester Georgia WILL events.

AALS-goers interested in the subject are most welcome to take part in the January 5 discussion/reception, to be held in Yosemite C, a room in the Ballroom Level of the AALS conference hotel, the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, 333 O’Farrell Street. Please join us, and please feel free to forward this notice to interested colleagues.

For more information, e-mail ruskintlaw@uga.edu.

(Cross-posted from Exchange of Notes)

Travel grants will help students and very-early-career persons to take part in IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference

/ Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment
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A scene from IntLawGrrls’ last conference, “Women in International Criminal Law,” October 29, 2010, at the American Society of International Law

Delighted to announce that we will be able to make it easier for some students or very-early-career persons whose papers are accepted for “IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference” to take part in this daylong celebration.

Thanks to the generosity of the Planethood Foundation, we have established a fund that will provide small grants to help defray the costs of travel to and accommodation at our conference, to be held March 3, 2017, at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, Athens, Georgia USA. The law school is hosting as part of its Georgia Women in Law Lead initiative.

We’re pleased too to announce two additional conference cosponsors: the American Society of International Law and ASIL’s Women in International Law Interest Group (WILIG).

As detailed in our call for papers/conference webpage and prior posts, organizers Diane Marie Amann, Beth Van Schaack, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, and Kathleen A. Doty welcome paper proposals from academics, students, policymakers, and advocates, in English, French, or Spanish, on all topics in international, comparative, foreign, and transnational law and policy.

In addition to paper workshops, there will be at least one plenary panel, on “strategies to promote women’s participation in shaping international law and policy amid the global emergence of antiglobalism.”

The deadline for submissions will be January 1, 2017. Students or very-early-career person who would like to be considered for one of these grants to help defray travel costs are asked to indicate this in their submissions. Papers will be accepted on a rolling basis – indeed, we’ve already received several – so we encourage all to submit as soon as they are able.

For more information, see the call for papers or e-mail doty@uga.edu.

Georgia Law launches women’s leadership initiative: “Georgia WILL”

/ Diane Marie Amann / 7 Comments

georgiawillheader

I’m very pleased to reprint this announcement of an important Georgia Law initiative, available in its pinkest form here and at the Exchange of Notes blog of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here. IntLawGrrls: see below March 3 and stay tuned this week for more details.

In celebration of its own women leaders and in an effort to nurture women who will lead in the future, the University of Georgia School of Law this year is spearheading Georgia WILL (Georgia Women in Law Lead).

Georgia WILL launched with a breakfast on August 19, 2016, the centenary of the day that the State of Georgia enacted a statute entitled “Attorneys at Law; Females May Be,” and soon admitted Minnie Hale Daniel, whose previous applications had been rejected, as the state’s first woman lawyer. Celebrated along with Daniel were Georgia Law’s first alumnae, Edith House and Gussie Brooks, both members of the Class of 1925, as well as the many women who today help lead the law school. They include: Associate Deans Diane Marie Amann, Lori Ringhand, and Usha Rodrigues; Carol A. Watson, Director of Georgia Law’s Alexander Campbell King Law Library; Ramsey Bridges, Director of Law Admissions; Anne S. Moser, Senior Director of Law School Advancement; Heidi M. Murphy, Director of Communications and Public Relations; and Kathleen A. Day, Director of Business & Finance.

“This is a superb opportunity both to give recognition to our women leaders and to join in the global conversation about women’s leadership,” remarked Georgia Law Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge. “Given our hope that this initiative will foster a new generation of women leaders, we’re especially pleased that our Women Law Students Association is cosponsoring all events.”

Events in the next twelve months will feature women, including members of the Georgia Law community, who are national and international pathbreakers in law, business, and public service. One highlight event will occur at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in San Francisco, where Georgia Law will host a brainstorming session for women professors who are or are interested in becoming law school or university administrators; another, at Georgia Law’s Athens main campus, where IntLawGrrls contributors will convene in March for a conference marking the blog’s 10th birthday.

Events scheduled so far (at Georgia Law’s Athens campus unless otherwise stated) are as follows:

October 13 Judge Lisa Godbey Wood (J.D. 1990), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, will deliver “Reflections on Sentencing.” Her service as Georgia Law’s inaugural B. Avant Edenfield Jurist in Residence also includes teaching a week-long course on sentencing.

 

October 19 Judge Navanethem Pillay, a South African jurist whose former positions include United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Judge on the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, will speak on “National Sovereignty vs. International Human Rights” at Georgia Law’s Atlanta Campus. The World Affairs Council of Atlanta cosponsors.

October 25 Ethical challenges faced by corporations will be the topic of a talk by Sloane Perras (J.D. 2002), Chief Legal Officer at Krystal Company and On The Border. Earlier this month, Perras was recognized by the Women’s In-House Counsel Leadership Institute for welcoming other women into her area of practice and also for directing corporate policy toward inclusion of women in high-level legal positions.

January 5 Georgia Law will host “Women’s Leadership in Legal Academia” at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in San Francisco. This brainstorming session for women professors who are or are interested in becoming law school or university administrators will feature academics, as well as Monika Kalra Varma, an executive leadership consultant who served for the last five years as Executive Director of the District of Columbia Bar Pro Bono Program.

February 4  Georgia State Representative Stacey Godfrey Evans (J.D. 2003) will provide opening remarks at “Georgia Women Run.” Joining her will be a diverse group of elected officials, who will discuss the challenges and rewards of running for office as a nontraditional candidate.

 

March 1 to 31 Georgia Law’s Alexander Campbell King Law Library will host a special exhibit, “Attorneys at Law; Females May Be: Celebrating the Past and Ongoing Leadership of Women in Law,” in conjunction with Women’s History Month and, on March 8, International Women’s Day.

March 2 The Women Law Students Association will present the 35th Annual Edith House Lecture, named after a graduate of Georgia Law’s Class of 1925 whose career included service as the first woman U.S. Attorney in Florida. Delivering this year’s lecture will be Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia.

March 3 Contributors to IntLawGrrls, the pre-eminent international blog authored primarily by women, will convene for a 10th birthday conference and research forum.

 

March 18 Receiving the 2016 Distinguished Service Scroll Awards, given annually by Georgia Law’s Law School Association, will be Ertharin Cousin (J.D. 1982), Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Programme, based in Rome, Italy, and Audrey Boone Tillman (J.D. 1989), Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Aflac Inc.

 
March 27 Gabrielle Kaufmann-Kohler, Professor of Law at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, will deliver the 2d Annual Glenn Hendrix Lecture at Georgia Law’s Atlanta campus. The Atlanta International Arbitration Society cosponsors.

 

Fall 2017 Vice-Chancellor Tamika R. Montgomery-Reeves (J.D. 2006) of the Delaware Court of Chancery will teach a short course on advanced topics in Delaware corporate law, and also headline an alumnae reception in Atlanta.

¡Brava! to IntLawGrrl Beth Hillman, new President of Mills College, oldest women’s college in western United States

/ Diane Marie Amann / Leave a comment

hillmanA late addition to our “Go ‘Grrls” installments from a few weeks back: delighted to read that IntLawGrrls contributor Beth Hillman (left) soon will be installed as the new President of Mills College in Oakland, one of the oldest women’s institutions of higher education!

Our prior posts by or about Beth are here and here. And here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s official announcement from Mills:

Oakland, CA–August 08, 2016 On Friday, September 23, 2016, the Board of Trustees of Mills College will inaugurate Elizabeth L. Hillman as 14th president of the oldest women’s college in the West.

Hillman, who began her tenure July 1, brings extensive higher education experience in both teaching and institutional leadership to Mills. She shares with the Mills community a deep understanding of the challenges and limited opportunities women face when seeking positions in the top ranks of historically underrepresented fields.

“I was drawn to Mills because of its commitment to women’s education and its legacy of empowering women, embracing difference, and promoting creativity,” Hillman said. “Mills is a special place, and I am determined to successfully build on our 164-year legacy of diversity and intellectual engagement.”

Prior to joining Mills, Hillman served as provost and academic dean and professor of law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. She also served as professor and director of faculty development at Rutgers University School of Law and has taught at Yale University and the US Air Force Academy.

Hillman holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Duke University, a master’s degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania, a law degree from Yale Law School, and a doctorate in history with a focus on women’s history from Yale University.

Newly elected Mills College Board of Trustees Chair Katie Sanborn ’83 is looking forward to a new chapter in Mills’ storied history.

“I am extremely honored and excited to work with President Hillman and the entire Mills community to support the resurgence in women’s education,” Sanborn said. “The world needs a place like Mills that empowers women to make their mark in every possible way and place.” …

¡Brava!

A new woman head of state: Taking on troubles in Central African Republic

/ Diane Marie Amann / 1 Comment

panzaToday Catherine Samba-Panza, a businesswoman turned politician, became President of the Central African Republic. The 1st woman head of state in that country, Samba-Panza joins 2 others in Africa: President Joyce Banda of Malawi and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.

The 135-member National Transitional Council chose Samba-Panza in a runoff held because none of 8 original candidates obtained a majority in the 1st round of voting. The Council voted in the wake of the January 10 resignation of Michel Djotodia, who had seized power in March 2013 and ruled as President for just under a year. In that same time frame, Samba-Panza has served as mayor of Bangui, the capital. (credit for photo by Eric Feferberg/AFP)

The new President faces immense challenges. The Séléka rebellion that brought her predecessor to power eventually morphed into protracted armed violence, between former rebels in that Muslim-led faction and Christian, “anti-Balaka” militias. These armed groups are said to have recruited upwards of 6,000 child soldiers, notwithstanding the international ban on child-soldiering. A fifth of the population – nearly a million persons – has been displaced.

The new President, described as a politically neutral Christian, addressed these troubles in her election speech:

‘I call on my children, especially the anti-balaka, to put down their arms and stop all the fighting. The same goes for the ex-Seleka – they should not have fear. I don’t want to hear any more talk of murders and killings.’

Whether violence will abate in the Central African Republic – a situation-country of the International Criminal Court, to which thousands of U.N. Security Council-authorized international troops are now being deployed – remains to be seen.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)