ALL RISE
Minnesota Law Students Get Hands-On Experience with Presidential Policymaking
Photo: Tony Nelson
Four 3Ls participate in policy discussions with the Biden transition team and administration
A GROUP OF STUDENTS FROM
Minnesota Law’s Journal of Law & Inequality (JLI) recently had the opportunity to experience policymaking from a unique vantage point, facilitating and participating in important discussions about policy with advisers and members of an incoming presidential administration. While coordinating the 2021 Summit for Civil Rights, held virtually on Feb. 11, the students connected with key members of the Biden transition team and other important national leaders, including Marcia Fudge, the recently confirmed secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
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(HUD). The discussions centered on housing policy and its relationship to education policy, racial segregation, and concentrated poverty. JLI first connected with the Summit for Civil Rights in 2017, when it coordinated and hosted the very first symposium. Since that time, JLI has remained connected to this movement and organization through Professor Myron Orfield, director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity and a driving force behind the summit. The 2021 summit was co-hosted by JLI and the Institute. In addition to HUD Secretary Fudge, prominent participants included: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison ’90;
Journal of Law & Inequality editor-in-chief Navin Ramalingam, 3L, with symposium editors Maci Burke, 3L, James Holden, 3L, and Marisa Tillman, 3L
Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California; Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio; NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson; and National Fair Housing Alliance President and CEO Lisa Rice. Garry W. Jenkins, dean and William S. Pattee Professor of Law, opened the conference with welcoming remarks. “It was a huge and complicated conference, and [the students] ran it flawlessly,” Orfield said. “They really stepped up to the plate and put together vast amounts of
