Columbia University School of Law Professor Patricia Williams, nationally recognized for her public interest work, will deliver the 40th Commencement address at Vermont Law School on Saturday, May 16, President and Dean Marc Mihaly announced today.
In addition to honoring Williams, VLS will confer honorary degrees upon Kimberly Wasserman, a Chicago-based grassroots activist, and Frances E. Yates, a longtime VLS supporter and former trustee.
"I am pleased to announce our 2015 commencement speaker and honorary degree recipients," Mihaly said. "They are leaders in their chosen fields, bringing passion and unwavering dedication to their causes, and are an inspiration in the communities where they work and to the greater Vermont Law School community."
This year's honorees are:
Patricia Williams is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University School of Law. A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, she has served on faculties of the University of Wisconsin School Of Law, Harvard University's Women's Studies Program, and the City University of New York Law School at Queen's College. As a law professor, she has testified before Congress and acted as a consultant and coordinator for a variety of public interest lawsuits. She is the recipient of the Alumnae Achievement Award from Wellesley, the Graduate Society Medal from Harvard, and the MacArthur foundation "genius" grant. Before entering academia she practiced law, as a consumer advocate and deputy city attorney for the City of Los Angeles and as a staff attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
Williams writes the monthly "Diary of a Mad Law Professor" for the The Nation magazine. Her columns cover broad issues of social justice, including the rhetoric of the war on terror, race, ethnicity, gender, civil rights law, bioethics and eugenics, forensic uses of DNA, and comparative issues of class and culture.
Kimberly Wasserman is a grassroots activist and coordinator for Chicago's Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, with which she led local residents in a successful campaign to shut down two of the country's oldest and dirtiest coal plants, and now works toward transforming Chicago's old industrial sites into parks and multi-use spaces. According to Wasserman, empowering Little Village community members has been the highlight of her career, and building a sound organization of people that work well together toward the same goal has been her most significant achievement to date.
Dr. Frances E. Yates is a board-certified nutrition specialist with a consulting practice in Maine. She has presented research at the Annual Symposium of Hemochromatosis and for the American College of Nutrition, and has served as an instructor at the University of Maine's Thomaston Center. She is a graduate of Wagner College and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Yates served as a Vermont Law School trustee from 2004 to 2014. She is the sister of the late Charles Yates '93, also a former VLS trustee.
The 40th Commencement ceremony at Vermont Law School will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 16, on the South Royalton Village Green. About 300 candidates will be presented for juris doctor, master of laws, and master's degrees. For more information about commencement, visit vermontlaw.edu/commencement.