Shapiro Family Charitable Foundation Gift Supports the Emmett Institute The Shapiro Family Charitable Foundation has made a gift of $500,000 to establish the Ann Carlson Discretionary Fund, which will be used to support the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. The fund will be used for a wide variety of needs and opportunities, including graduate and undergraduate scholarships, fellowships, faculty projects and research. The gift will be matched through the Dan and Rae Emmett Matching Gift Challenge, doubling its impact. Ralph ’58 and Shirley Shapiro have deep and lasting ties to UCLA and a long history of philanthropic support to UCLA Law. They have endowed four chairs at UCLA Law, including the Shirley Shapiro Chair in Environmental Law. Ralph Shapiro, a long-time member of the UCLA Foundation Board of Directors, has served as president of the UCLA School of Law Alumni Association and as a member of the law school’s board of advisors. He received the 2008 Alumni of the Year Award for Public and Community Service and was named the 1983 Alumnus of the Year. Shirley Shapiro is a member of the Emmett Institute advisory board, the board of directors of UCLA Women & Philanthropy and the board of visitors for UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture. In 2014, UCLA School of Law received a $1.5 million matching gift challenge from the Emmett Family Foundation to greatly increase the law school’s capacity to advance law and policy solutions to pressing environmental issues. The Emmett family has long been concerned about environmental issues and is actively involved in supporting environmental organizations and initiatives. Their 2008 gift to UCLA Law established the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment, which was expanded in 2014 through an additional $1 million leadership gift from the Emmett Family Foundation.
UCLA Law Receives Gift
to Support the First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic UCLA School of Law has received a gift of $125,000 from entrepreneur Scott Banister to support the law school’s First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic. The clinic, which was launched in fall 2013, will be named the Scott & Cyan Banister First Amendment Clinic in recognition of the generous gift. Under the direction of Professor Eugene Volokh, one of the nation’s leading First Amendment scholars, the clinic provides students with real-world experience drafting and filing friend-of-the-court briefs in state and federal courts on behalf of nonprofit organizations and academic groups. The briefs cover a wide range of free speech 64 UCLA LAW MAGAZINE | FALL 2015
and religious freedom questions, both under the First Amendment and related statutes. To date, the clinic has filed 20 briefs on behalf of groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Student Press Law Center, the ACLU of Virginia, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Cato Institute. Scott Banister is best known as a co-founder of IronPort, an email appliance provider that was bought by Cisco in 2007, and as an early advisor and board member at PayPal, where he co-invented the “email payments” feature. Banister has long been interested in law and how it can affect innovation and freedom, especially freedom of speech.
If you are interested in supporting current or future offerings in UCLA Law’s experiential programs, please contact Ben Chandler in the Office of External Affairs at 310.206.1061 or chandler@law.ucla.edu.