Perhaps the best gauge of the program’s success is its worldwide reach. Hathaway speaks and trains around the world, has drafted the refugee laws for several countries and the European Union, and has been cited in more than 700 appellate court decisions around the world. He also draws students and collaborators with a wide range of national origins. “I see his footprint everywhere,” Jane Olson says. The influence of the program is seen in the records of its graduates, many of whom now play key roles in the refugee and related fields. Some, like Moor and Seong Soo Kim (a PRAL visiting fellow in 2002–03, now an administrative law judge in Korea) decide asylum cases; some, like Taylor Garrett, ’03, undertake on-the-ground protection work (first with the UNHCR, and now as a field officer in the Southern Africa Regional Office of the U.S. Agency for International Development/U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance; see sidebar, page 21). Still others, like Libby Marsh, ’01, currently Human Rights Watch’s director of foundation relations in San Francisco, are active in the nongovernmental human rights world; or, like Michael Kagan, ’00, now an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are refugee law academics themselves. Many more have undertaken critical pro bono litigation on behalf of refugee rights. And of course, every year PRAL Fellows are dispatched around the world to help governments and NGOs sort out important refugee and asylum issues.
But it is perhaps Hathaway’s commitment to engaging personally with the most difficult refugee situations around the world that most clearly epitomizes Michigan Law’s determination to harness academic insights in the service of real protection for refugees. In Nepal, for example, there is little question that Hathaway’s influence will be felt for years to come. “Professor Hathaway’s immense care in listening to those he met with, and demonstrating respect and appreciation for Nepal’s humanitarian traditions, proved very effective in getting through to people at all levels,” recalls Amit Sen, a protection officer with UNHCR Nepal. “During the week or so he spent in Nepal, he was able to create breakthroughs on a number of key issues of policy and protection where we had been hitting a wall for years. “It was really quite extraordinary.” In 2012, PRAL will celebrate its 15th anniversary. We will tell the program’s story on the Law School website and in other media. Please email us anecdotes, stories, and photos about your PRAL experience, at PRALmemories@umich.edu.
Read more U-M Law School Refugee Caselaw Site: www.refugeecaselaw.org/Home.aspx The biennial Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law, which produces the Michigan Guidelines: www.refugeecaselaw.org/Michigan GeneralGuidelines.aspx • The first Colloquium, in April 1999, issued the Michigan Guidelines on the Internal Protection Alternative; • The second Colloquium, in March 2001, issued The Michigan Guidelines on Nexus to a Convention Ground, which define the meaning and application of the “for reasons of” clause in the refugee definition; • The third Colloquium, in March 2004, issued the Michigan Guidelines on Well-Founded Fear;
Law Quadrangle • Spring 2012
• The fourth Colloquium, in November 2006, issued the Michigan Guidelines on Protection Elsewhere;
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• The fifth Colloquium, in November 2009, issued the Michigan Guidelines on the Right to Work; • The sixth Colloquium, slated for spring 2013, will take up the question of the exclusion of terrorists and other international criminals from refugee status.