The Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School has selected four journalists for its 2016 Summer Media Fellowship program. Each fellow, selected from 60 highly qualified applicants from around the world, will attend a two-week Summer Session course at VLS and deliver a lecture as part of the law school's free "Hot Topics" series.
The 2016 Summer Media Fellows:
Jack Cushman is managing editor for Pulitzer Prize-winning InsideClimate News. He has written extensively about energy and the environment, as well as industry, military, finance and transportation. He previously worked for 35 years as a writer and editor in Washington, D.C., including with the D.C. bureau of The New York Times. He is the author of "Keystone and Beyond: Tar Sands and the National Interest in the Era of Climate Change."
Fiona Harvey is an award-winning environmental journalist for The Guardian. She has reported on environmental issues from the Arctic to the Amazon, from Nairobi to New York. She is the only journalist to have covered each of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conferences since 2004, excluding 2014, and has enjoyed unique access to the UN process. She previously worked for the Financial Times in London.
Brent Kendall is a legal affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Based in Washington, D.C., he has covered the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts for more than a decade, including a number of notable environmental matters—from early greenhouse gas cases, to Superfund litigation, to the recent legal battles over EPA rules targeting mercury emissions and cross-state air pollution. He previously worked for the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journals.
Priyanka Vora is an award-winning journalist for the Hindustan Times, the second-largest newspaper in India, where she takes the lead on the paper's health coverage with an emerging focus on the impact of environmental degradation on public health. Vora is a core member of a team working with the International Center for Journalists to create an association of health reporters around the world.
Fellows were selected based on work history and samples, commitment to covering environmental issues, and their potential for increasing understanding of environmental law and policy issues in the United States and internationally. Former media fellows include Natalie Allen of CNN, Tim McDonnell of Mother Jones, and Zoë Schlanger of Newsweek.
In addition to attending class, media fellows will join faculty and other distinguished scholars in delivering lectures as part of Vermont Law School's 2016 Hot Topics summer series, which covers a wide range of current issues in environmental law. Free and open to the public, the hour-long lectures will be held from noon to 1 p.m. beginning June 2 in Oakes Hall on the VLS campus. Vermont Bar Association Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit is available. A schedule of upcoming Hot Topics will be announced later this spring and posted at vermontlaw.edu/summer. For more information about the series, call Courtney Collins at 802-831-1371 or email ccollins@vermontlaw.edu.
The Vermont Law School Summer Media Fellowship program has been made possible since 2002 by a generous grant from the Johnson Family Foundation.
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Vermont Law School, a private, independent institution, is home to the nation's premier environmental law program. VLS offers a Juris Doctor curriculum that emphasizes public service; three Master's Degrees—Master of Environmental Law and Policy, Master of Energy Regulation and Law, and Master of Food and Agriculture Law and Policy; and four post-JD degrees —LLM in American Legal Studies (for foreign-trained lawyers), LLM in Energy Law, LLM in Environmental Law, and LLM in Food and Agriculture Law. The school features innovative experiential programs and is home to the Environmental Law Center, South Royalton Legal Clinic, Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, Energy Clinic, Food and Agriculture Clinic, and Center for Applied Human Rights. For more information, visit vermontlaw.edu, find us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.