In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Natalie Trigo Reyes ’19 — a Chayes International Public Service Fellow in 2017 and 2018 — joined forces with Harvard Law Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo ’08 and Lee Mestre of the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs to plan the law school’s response to the disaster.
Read Natalie’s story on Harvard Law Today.
Photo: Lorin Granger
Since the Cravath International Fellowships were launched in 2007, more than 170 students have traveled to 69 countries during Winter Term as Cravath Fellows, pursuing clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus. In 2018, ten Cravath Fellows traveled to nine countries; four of the students (left to right: James Toomey ’19, Alexis Wansac ’19, Filippo Raso ’18 and Niku Jafarnia ’19) recently shared their stories with Harvard Law Today.
Photo credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff Photographer
During January 2018, 58 HLS students traveled to 29 countries, conducting research for writing projects or undertaking independent clinicals, with support from the Winter Term International Travel Grant Program , which includes the Cravath International Fellowships, the Lee and Li Foundation Grants, the Reginald F. Lewis Internships, the Mead Cross Cultural Stipends, the Andrew B. Steinberg Scholarships, and the Human Rights Program Grants. Several of the students shared photos from their travels; view the gallery here.
From Harvard Law Today:
A typical Harvard Law School student has limited free time. It might be filled with journal work, or student practice organizations, or intramural sports. For a year, Crispin Smith ’18, Nick Gersh ’18, and Ahsan Sayed ’18 spent their free moments exploring the successes and challenges facing religious and ethnic minorities in Iraqi Kurdistan on behalf of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
They worked with a team of nearly a dozen researchers, including incoming HLS 1L Vartan Shadarevian ’20, to craft a groundbreaking 75-page qualitative and quantitative analysis of a region that is regarded as a refuge for religious minorities in the Middle East. The report was published in June and primarily co-authored by Smith and Shadarevian.
Just a week before Derek arrived in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, the city implemented a new program eliminating fares on public transportation for city residents. For Derek — who came to Harvard to study urban planning, then became interested in how legal institutions affect how cities develop — this was a local experiment with global significance. “An idea like this helps people get around and save money, but it also challenges the traditional ways that the law thinks about how cities should be governed,” he explained, involving issues ranging from fiscal structures and shifts in urban population to politically marginalized communities. By traveling to Tallinn, Derek was able to do archival research with medieval documents that helped to explain Estonia’s long tradition of local autonomy, then visit City Hall to interview
the deputy mayor and director of transportation. Equally important, “I could wait at a bus stop, ask people for change (because I still had to pay), and see who was using the bus,” Derek remembered; “It’s a popular policy, voted in by a referendum, but there was also a lot of cynicism, a sense of disillusionment with the politics behind it.” His winter term project has given him a “rich vein of material” for his academic work and an appetite for more international travel: “I want to go to places where there’s something to learn from.”
(Please visit “Winter Term 2013: Snapshots from Students” to read about other recent projects.)