Allen, Pasachoff are Rappaport Fellows

Emily Allen, a first-year student at Harvard Law School, and Eloise Pasachoff, a second-year student in the four-year joint degree program at the Law School and the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), have been selected to serve as 2002 Rappaport Fellows in the Rappaport Honors Program in Law and Public Service at Suffolk University Law School. Allen and Pasachoff were two of 12 highly qualified law students selected from Boston-area law schools who demonstrate exceptional commitment toward public service and the betterment of civic life in the Greater Boston area.

In her first year at the Law School, Allen acted as citation editor for the Journal on Legislation and a research volunteer for the Civil Rights Project. Prior to entering law school, she was a union organizer with the New York Professional Nurses Union. She is a graduate of Cornell University and of the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute.

Pasachoff is on the editorial board of the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review. After graduating from Harvard College in 1995, she received an M.A. in English literature from Yale and taught middle school and high school English, social studies, and special education in New York City. As a 2001 Imagitas Fellow, Pasachoff spent last summer in the Administration for Children and Families in Washington, D.C. As a 2002 Rappaport Fellow, she will spend the summer working at Community Action Program Legal Services (CAPLAW) in Boston.

Allen and Pasachoff will each receive $7,000 for the 10-week internship. Allen will be interning for the Common Cause of Massachusetts on political reform and clean election issues, while Pasachoff will be working for the legal division of CAPLAW.

The Rappaport Honors Program in Law and Public Service was made possible by a five-year grant gifted by the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation. The program is built around a series of experiences and activities that blend the practical and the intellectual elements of public service law and civic leadership. Each Rappaport Fellow will complete a paid summer internship with a Boston-area government, public interest, or nonprofit employer that focuses on urban law and policy issues.

This unique honors program provides entry into a special community of outstanding public service lawyers and civic leaders. Rappaport Fellows join an interdisciplinary community enhanced by the program’s association with the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at KSG. These students are given the rare opportunity to become part of an evolving “community over time” that brings together current and former fellows and program supporters for discussions, presentations, and social events.

Every Wednesday evening from June 5 through July 31, Rappaport Fellows will meet for discussion on topics related to public service, civic leadership, and urban law and policy in the Greater Boston area. Leading lawyers, government officials, and community leaders often will join to share their experiences, insights, and advice.

Law students in their first or second year of study, or third year of part-time study at one of the six law schools in the Greater Boston area (Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, New England School of Law, Northeastern University, and Suffolk University) are eligible to apply.

For more information on the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, at the Kennedy School of Government, contact Charles Euchner, executive director of the Rappaport Institute, at (617) 496-3155, or visit the Web site at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/rappaport.