An organ donor whose gift of life inspired a career in national transplant operations and beyond. A Fort Wayne native who rose to the C-Suite of some of the country’s top medical device and health technology companies. A leading business leader who has used her legal skills to help large, complex companies mitigate risks at home and abroad. And a young alumnus who has already made his mark in his native Michigan, where he advises one of the nation’s most recognizable governors.

The four recipients of the 2023 Maurer School of Law’s Distinguished Service Awards—Macey Leigh Levan ’11, Dave Milne ’94, Kim Richardson ’06, and Alex Thibodeau ’18—have set a remarkable standard for success in their careers and communities.

They were honored Friday (Sept. 29) in a standing-room only ceremony in the DeLaney Moot Court Room.

“These awards honor graduates of the Law School who have distinguished themselves and served their communities and our school in ways that far exceed traditional business, professional, and civic duties, of which there are many,” said Dean Christiana Ochoa. Ochoa said the awards were timely given the Law School’s recent designation as the #3 school for public service in government by preLaw magazine.

“We’re just getting started when it comes to public interest law and public service,” she said. “We are going to put ourselves on the map.”

This year’s DSA recipients are:

Macey Leigh Levan. A 2011 graduate of the Law School, Levan earned a PhD in Health Policy and Management and International Research Ethics in 2016 from the IU Fairbanks School of Public Health. She is currently an associate professor of surgery and population health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and the director of the Center for Surgical and Transplant Applied Research Qualitative Core at the NYU Langone Transplant Institute.  Her team’s work to operationalize vaccination trials for the immunocompromised during the COVID-19 pandemic was applauded and recognized by Dr. Anthony Fauci. She served a three-year term as director of the national transplant system—the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network—under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, work inspired by the donation of her own kidney to a cousin in need. Levan’s award was accepted on her behalf by her father, Milt Thompson ’79, who earned the Law School’s inaugural Distinguished Service Award in 1997.

Dave Milne began his legal career at Bose McKinney & Evans and then practiced for several years at Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary before joining Steak n Shake, Inc., where he became Vice President and General Counsel. In 2009, Milne joined Symmetry Medical, Inc., where he worked as general counsel, senior vice president of human resources and chief compliance officer. Following Symmetry Medical’s sale, he remained with a former division, Symmetry Surgical Inc., as general counsel and senior vice president of Business Development. After Symmetry Surgical’s sale in 2022, Milne joined Natus Medical, Inc., an ArchiMed Portfolio Company, as chief HR officer and chief administrative officer. Milne and his wife Meagan are longtime supporters of the Dean Fromm Memorial Fund, the Law School’s Fund for Excellence, and IU Athletics. He has served the school as an adjunct professor and on its Alumni Board.

Kim Richardson is a strategic business leader and forward-thinking health, safety, and security attorney. She currently serves as of counsel at Conn Maciel Carey in Washington, DC., as an adjunct professor at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, and as a consultant for the Wilmington University School of Law in Delaware. Previously, Richardson worked in-house at Amazon Web Services and DuPont, and in the federal government. She serves on the Law School’s Alumni Board, the Advisory Board for the Delaware Chapter of the National Alliance of Mental Illness, and the Board of Directors for the Delaware Chapter of the National Audobon Society. She previously served as a member of the Legal Steering Committee for the National Safety Council. In 2008, The Network Journal named her one of the nation’s top 40 Under Forty African-Americans, and in 2012, she received the United States Postmaster General’s D.R.I.V.E Award (Delivering Results, Innovation, Value, and Efficiency).

Alex Thibodeau. Just five years out of law school, Thibodeau was appointed director of appointments in the administration of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. In that capacity he serves as senior advisor for gubernatorial appointments to the judiciary and cabinet, as well as the more than 240 state boards and commissions. Prior to this, he was an associate attorney at Varnum LLP, where he focused primarily on data privacy and cybersecurity, as well as advising autonomous vehicle companies on compliance issues related to emerging technology. His background includes significant experience in civil litigation, telecommunication, municipal/administrative law, utility franchise agreements, and regulatory compliance. Thibodeau is passionate about being a leader within the community. He currently serves as a trustee to the Grand Rapids Bar Association—where he is chair of the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee and former president of the Young Lawyers Section. Thibodeau also sits on the Advisory Council of the Young Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Michigan. Outside of the legal field, Thibodeau sits on the Board of Trustees for the Grand Rapids Art Museum and routinely volunteers with other non-profit entities in West Michigan. During his time in Law School, he served as president of the Student Bar Association and on the editorial board for the Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design and as notes editor for the Indiana Journal of Social Equality.

Four distinguished women judges from the Middle East and North Africa—including the first female judge in Jordanian history—will visit the Indiana University Bloomington campus Sept. 25-26 for a conference titled “Women Judges in Dialogue,” where they will discuss their own experience as women in the judiciary as well as issues surrounding constitutional adjudication in the region. They will be joined by faculty from the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and the Maurer School of Law.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME) at HLS and the Center for Constitutional Democracy (CCD) at the Law School, the judges will also participate in a panel discussion, “Her Excellency: A Conversation with Women Judges From the Constitutional Courts in the MENA Region,” on Monday, Sept. 25 at 5:30 p.m. in the DeLaney Moot Court Room. Christiana Ochoa, dean of the Maurer School of Law, will moderate the discussion, which is open to the public.

“In recent years, partly in response to the Arab Spring, a number of countries in the Middle East/North Africa region have created new courts to handle constitutional claims,” said Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law and CCD Director Susan Williams. “At the same time, women judges have been gaining recognition and acceptance in these systems. As a result, there are, for the first time, women judges on many of the highest courts in the region. We’re looking forward to bringing four of these judges together for a conversation about their experiences as women on these courts.”

Scheduled participants include:

• Her Excellency Judge Mireille Najm is a member of the Constitutional Council of Lebanon since November 2021. She also teaches Constitutional law at the Faculty of Law of the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut.
• Her Excellency Judge Taghrid Hikmet has been a member of the Constitutional Court of Jordan since October 2020. She became the first female judge in the history of Jordan after being appointed to the Court of Appeal in 1998. In 2003 she was elected by the UN General Assembly to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she served from 2003 to 2011 as the first Arab female judge.
• Her Excellency Judge Maysa Bydoon has been a member of the Constitutional Court of Jordan since June 2022. She is also a Professor of International Law at the School of Law – University of Jordan. Before that, she taught at Al al-Bayt University, where she served as the Dean of the Law School from 2013-2020. Judge Bydoon has served on various governmental and royal committees in Jordan, including most recently the Royal Committee to Modernize the Political System (2021) and the Royal Secondary Committee for Constitutional Amendments (2021).
• Her Excellency Judge Latifa El Khal has served in the Constitutional Court of Morocco since March 2020. Judge El-Khal’s long judicial career started in 1983. Before joining the Constitutional Court, she served as president of the Administrative Court of Appeals in Marrakesh, to which she was appointed in 2011. In 2018, she published a monograph on the responsibilities of states for reparations regarding acts of terrorism.

The CCD has a longstanding relationship with the Constitutional Court of Jordan, Williams said, having worked with the court for the past five years on programs and workshops exploring issues of interest to the judges on the court. The organizers hope that this conference will serve as the next step in building a network among women judges in the wider MENA region (together with legal academics) for the purpose of sharing knowledge, experience, and support.

Barbara Bernal Monnroy arrived in the United States from her native Venezuela at the age of 16, with no practical English language knowledge or skills. “Generation Zero,” as she puts it. Though she was a year behind because of the language barrier, Monnroy worked tirelessly to succeed, eventually graduating from a Florida high school with strong enough credentials to earn a place at Davis & Elkins College. She succeeded there, too, in rural West Virginia, earning valedictorian honors and serving as the college’s graduation speaker.

Monnroy was the first person in her family to earn one degree, let alone three—she majored in criminology, political science, and, of all things, English—from a United States college or university. And she broke another barrier in her family’s history when she applied to and enrolled in the Indiana University Maurer School of Law as a 1L in the fall of 2022.

That incredible journey—from non-native English speaker to second-year law student in the span of six years, is one Monnroy and her family are understandably proud of. But she’s not stopping there.

In August 2023, Monnroy helped launch the First Generation Law Students Association, creating a central network of support and camaraderie for students just like her who are the first in their families to attend an institution of higher education.

Monnroy said she had attended First Generation lunches—biannual events that bring together FirstGen students once a semester—put on by the Law School, but wanted to do more.

“I think we can do a lot more to create a community,” she said. “I noticed that a lot of FirstGen students are not in affinity groups, and affinity groups are where you have your people, your community. I noticed the FirstGen students didn’t have something just for them, so I wanted to involve people with different backgrounds, from different socioeconomic statuses, from different everything, really.”

Enter the FGLA.

In its first month of existence, the organization has drawn the interest of more than two-dozen First Generation students, with more expected to join as word of the group’s formation spreads.

Supporting the needs of First Generation students is a growing trend around the country. When the Law School’s Class of 2026 began orientation the second week of August, Professor Don Gjerdingen—himself a FirstGen graduate and now the FGLA faculty advisor—gave a moving speech to the roughly 20 percent of the incoming class that are First Generation students. Gjerdingen recalled his own inspirational path from a working-class family in Minnesota to law professor.

Monnroy said the FGLA plans to host multiple events this coming year, including meet-and-greets with the student body, bring in external speakers, and meetings with FirstGen Law School alumni to forge a bond between the two communities. That connection played out in Monnroy’s first summer internship with the Hon. Jose Rodriguez ’80—another FirstGen graduate—in Miami.

“Being supportive of each other is the most important part of what we want to do,” she said. “We want to help as many people as we can, and provide whatever resources we can to help make them successful in their law school careers.”

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Federalist Society chapter has received the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Award for Spring Breakout Chapter. The award was accepted last month by the chapter’s co-presidents, Nick Clifford and Claudia Eder, at the Federalist Society’s National Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C.

The Benjamin Franklin Award for Spring Breakout Chapter is presented annually to the Federalist Society student chapter that continues successful programming through the end of the year and has an especially strong spring semester.

Eder said the Maurer chapter was recognized for its heightened outreach efforts in the spring 2023 semester, including hosting more than the number of recommended events, high attendance at those events, and an exceptional communications platform to publicize the chapter’s activities.

Eder and Clifford attended the Federalist Society’s three-day National Leadership Conference, where they learned how to be effective leaders of their chapter as well as helping foster debate inside the Law School.

“The idea of fostering debate and presenting ideas that aren’t always necessarily present in the Law School is what drew me to joining the Federalist Society,” Eder said. “Giving students a choice to hear from speakers they might not otherwise get to is something we take great pride in.”

The Indiana Law Federalist Society chapter already has big plans for the 2023-24 year, including a moderated discussion in commemoration of Constitution Day (to be held September 19) and a former White House leader who will discuss the indictments of President Trump on September 26.

Adding to an already impressive list of new faculty, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law is pleased to announce CJ Ryan, of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, will join the Law School for the start of the spring 2024 semester.

In addition to his role on the Brandeis faculty, Ryan is an affiliated scholar at the American Bar Foundation.

A recognized expert in legal education, trust law, non-profit law, and the law surrounding student loans, Ryan teaches Decedents’ Estates & Trusts, Secured Transactions, and Law & Economics. He has previously taught Property, Tax, and Statistics for Lawyers. In addition to writing in the doctrinal areas in which he teaches, much of his research centers on corporate governance, the legal profession, the economics of higher education, and technology transfer.

“Maurer is a special law school,” Ryan said of his decision to move north. “From afar, I have always admired its rich history and its peerless group of scholars trained in the law & society tradition. Maurer is the kind of place where scholars and students can address why the law is the way it is and shape the conversation around what it can be. More than that, it’s a law school that trains the brightest in the next generation of lawyers—for Indiana and for the world. I’m so excited to be a part of this mission and I feel very fortunate to be joining the Maurer community.”

An interdisciplinary scholar, he has written more than 20 articles that have appeared in law reviews — such as the Alabama Law Review, Georgetown Law Review, Illinois Law Review, and SMU Law Review — specialty journals at NYU, Georgetown, and Notre Dame, and peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Legal Education and Research in Higher Education.

“CJ is a tremendous young scholar and teacher who will bring energy and passion to Baier Hall,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “We’re fortunate to have brought in an outstanding group of faculty over the past year, and we’re thrilled CJ will be a part of that class.”

The Law School added seven new members to the faculty—Valena Beety, Yvette Butler, Cindy Cho, Gabrielle Goodwin, Andrew Hammond, Jenn Oliva, and Cynthia Williams—throughout 2023, resulting in one of the school’s strongest hiring seasons in history.

Ryan said he’s excited to continue his research in Bloomington. He just started a project examining the economy of trust litigation in San Francisco, using filings from every trust case heard in the courts of that county over a six-year span.

“So little is known about litigation in the trust law space, and the findings that will emerge from the study will surely shed light about what motivates parties to bring claims in the courts involving trusts,” he said.

On Friday, August 11, and following the recent appointment of Brady Harman and Greg Zoeller, the Center for Constitutional Democracy added two new members to its Advisory Board: Professor Richard Albert (University of Texas at Austin) and Justice Manuel Cepeda (former President of the Constitutional Court of Colombia).

Albert is Professor of World Constitutions and Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, founding director of the International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism, and Co-President of the International Society of Public Law. Currently a member of the Constitutional Reform Committee advising the Government of Jamaica on writing and enacting a new constitution for the country, he has published over 25 books on constitutional democracy, including Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions (Oxford University Press). He has held visiting faculty appointments around the world, including at Universitas Airlangga (Indonesia), Universidad de Especialidades Espiritu Santo (Ecuador), Universidad Externado (Colombia), FGV (Brazil), Maharashtra National Law University Mumbai (India), University of Ottawa (Canada), Reichman University (Israel), University of Toronto (Canada), and Yale University. Formerly a law clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada, Richard Albert holds law and political science degrees from Yale, Oxford, and Harvard.

Justice Manuel Cepeda Espinosa is President Emeritus of the International Association of Constitutional Law and member of the governing board of Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. From 2013 to 2022 he was one of the agents of Colombia before the International Court of Justice in two delimitation cases initiated by Nicaragua against Colombia. From July 2015 to August 2016, he was part of the negotiating team on transitional justice during the Colombian peace process. He was President of the Constitutional Court of Colombia from 2005 to 2006 and a Justice from 2001 to 2009. He was Dean of the Law School of Universidad de los Andes (1996-2000); Ambassador of Colombia to UNESCO (1993-1995) and to the Helvetic Confederation (1995-1996). He participated in the drafting of the 1991 Colombian Constitution as Presidential Advisor for the Constituent Assembly and Constitutional Drafting for President of the Republic César Gaviria Trujillo (1990-1991); and Presidential Advisor for Legal Affairs for President of the Republic Virgilio Barco Vargas (1987-1990). Justice Cepeda is also the author of several constitutional law books. He graduated magna cum laude from Universidad de los Andes in 1986 and received his LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 1987. In 1993, Justice Cepeda received the Order of Boyacá, in the highest degree of the Great Cross, from the President of the Republic of Colombia.

The CCD Directors would like to extend a warm welcome to Professor Albert and Justice Cepeda, and look forward to their guidance and support during the three years of their term on the Advisory Board.

Professor Jenn Oliva joined Indiana Law earlier this summer as a professor of law and as Val Nolan Faculty Fellow. Prior to joining the IU Maurer Law faculty, Professor Oliva served as Professor of Law and Co-Director of the UCSF/UC Law Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco. She has also served as Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development and Director of the Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law at Seton Hall University School of Law where she was selected as the law school’s 2021 Professor of the Year (Paula Franzese Excellence in Teaching Award) and 2022 Faculty Researcher of the Year. She current serves as Chair of the AALS Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care. We asked her a few questions about her background and research.

We’ll start with the basics: What was the appeal of joining the Maurer School of Law? Why now?

JO: I am privileged to have the opportunity to join the Maurer School of Law. The law faculty is comprised of exceptional scholars and teachers who are also terrific colleagues and friends; the staff is wonderful, highly-skilled, and kind; and the students are top-notch. As an added bonus, the Bloomington community is fabulous and I get to live just down the road from my lovely and very supportive in-laws, who live in Fishers, Indiana.

You’re an Army veteran (Hooah!). What inspired you to go into law? Did you always know you wanted to go to law school?

JO: When I graduated from West Point, I elected to become a Military Police officer. During my time policing the force, the United States was involved in combat oversees and many soldiers returned to the states traumatized and injured. Several of those soldiers became criminal military justice-involved as a consequence of their physical and mental health injuries. It became my strongly-held view that those soldiers deserved compassion and state-of-the-art health care and not a military criminal legal system response. As a result, I decided to go to law school and become a health care attorney.

How did you get into academia?

JO: I was very fortunate.  While I was working in the FDA Law practice group of a large law firm in Washington, D.C., I got the opportunity to teach at a law school in place of a wonderful academic colleague who had received a prestigious fellowship and, thus, had to take a leave.  I loved that experience so much that I decided to go on the academic market for a full-time position.

You’re an award-winning teacher. How do you connect with students inside and outside the classroom? What do you like most about teaching?

JO: I honestly love everything about teaching law students. It’s my favorite part of my job. The students give me joy and constantly teach me new things, including what’s hip in the world these days. I am high energy in the classroom and I use a lot of different pedagogical techniques to ensure that all my students stay engaged in the course and have the maximum opportunity to learn and thrive. I also make every opportunity to get to know my students outside the classroom by, among other things, being available routinely for office hours and meet-ups, participating as faculty advisor to student groups, supervising student notes, and encouraging them to serve as research assistants. There is nothing more rewarding than watching your students graduate and go out into the world and make it a better place.

Your research has won accolades, too. Can you talk a bit about the areas that interest you most? Any particular projects you’re excited to work on/continue here?

JO: My research and teaching interests include health law and policy, privacy law, evidence, torts, and complex litigation.  I am currently finalizing a co-authored article at the intersection of environmental and health law that will be published by the UCLA Law Review this summer and working with a disability law colleague on a third article in a trilogy of publications about state prescription drug monitoring programs.  I also am working on article tentatively titled The “New” Drug War and am lucky to one of a group of interdisciplinary scholars who recently received a generous research grant from the NIH to study the impacts of pharmaceutical industry messaging on the opioid crisis among U.S. military veterans.

Associate Professor Yvette T. Butler joined the Indiana Law faculty this summer. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota, Morris, and her law degree from The George Washington University Law School.

The most obvious one (to me, anyway!): What was the draw for you in terms of leaving Mississippi for Indiana?

IU is such an exciting opportunity. The faculty is so welcoming and are rockstars in their subject areas; the students are bright, friendly, and motivated (I’ve never had students attend my job talk before! And they asked wonderful questions); and Indiana, as a state, provides ample challenges and opportunities. I love that the Law School is pulling together (as I’ve been calling it) a Justice League, with this new cohort of professors that all bring unique perspectives to the criminal system.

Your expertise encompasses a number of interesting issues—from the marginalization of sex workers to police misconduct to advocating on behalf of human trafficking survivors. What pulled you in that direction, as opposed to say, civil procedure or tax law?

For what it’s worth, I’m a big believer in the idea that there’s another universe with another me that is focused on Tax Law (or an infinite number of other subjects, really). The law as a whole is fascinating and (even though I took Federal Income Tax in law school) I didn’t have the kind of exposure to it that would have prompted me to dedicate my life to it (there’s a need for tax law expertise to support human trafficking survivors, for example!) But one thing that does hold true across space, time, and dimensions is my drive to address marginalization. It’s hard to say exactly what pulled me in that direction – whether it is my own identity as a black woman, my maternal grandfather’s history as a labor activist turned diplomat, or the fact that my paternal grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman, or the bogus legal trouble my brother found himself in while in high school (which was addressed in his favor, thank goodness). But in this universe, in this timeline, I feel like I was pulled exactly where I needed to be: marginalization, power, and the pursuit of Collective Liberation!

You were an award-winning teacher at the University of Mississippi, having won the Ben Hardy Faculty Excellence Award just last year. What do you enjoy about being in the classroom? How do you connect with students?

I get a renewed energy every semester. There’s nothing like a fresh crop of law students filled with hopes, dreams, anxieties, and passion for their future career. I love engaging with students in ways that makes the material come alive. I remember being in law school and feeling confused and disconnected from the material. I remember wishing I had more context for what I was learning. To that end, I love using music, art, poetry, contextualized history, and current events to relate back to the material. I’ve had many students tell me that helps them understand what our cases are about (especially for a class like Constitutional Law) and also helps them see themselves and the issues they care about in the law.

Could you talk about any current or upcoming research projects you’re excited about?

My research generally focuses on why and how survival activities are criminalized and if and how they can be protected by the Constitution, or otherwise. I have two threads of current research projects (with about three planned articles for each) that I think are pretty exciting. The one I’ll focus on here is about our understanding of survival, criminalized survival, and the connection to labor. There is a lot of interesting stuff out there on a possible “right to earn a living” in the Constitution. I’m fascinated by how the Constitution can protect some kinds of labor, while leaving other kinds of labor open to criminalization. Ultimately, this means that various marginalized people are open to criminalization, instead of protection. Why is that? How is that? What should we do instead?

Your interests seem to overlap in some ways with the work of Prof. India Thusi. Have you two had a chance to connect?

We have! We’ve known each other for 3-4 years now. Our work really feeds off of each other, I think. We’re both critical theorists who ask a lot of questions about sex, crime, and policing. But we also have very divergent interests. Prof. Thusi is great and I’m looking forward to being just a few office doors away!

Finally, how do you enjoy spending time away from academia?

Three words: trashy, reality, television.

You’ve read about some of the amazing students we have starting with us next week. Now we’ll introduce you to some of the new faculty who have joined us over the summer. First up is Valena Beety, the Robert H. McKinney Professor of Law. Prof. Beety was most recently Professor of Law and Deputy Director of the Academy for Justice at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

I’ll start with the obvious: Why IU, and why now?

VB: I grew up just outside of Indianapolis. My mom taught for Indianapolis Public Schools (at Arlington High School and Crispus Attucks High School), and my dad worked for AC Delco, as part of General Motors. I graduated from Brebeuf Jesuit High School, and went to college and law school in Chicago, before leaving the Midwest for job opportunities. I’m thankful to be able to move back to Indiana with my spouse and to be close to my family again. I have many friends who went to IU for school, and now friends who teach there – including some of my friends from high school! Bloomington is an amazing and welcoming community, and close to Indianapolis. I’m glad to be back and be a Hoosier! Though admittedly, my dad and my granddad both went to Purdue (my granddad went to school with Orville Redenbacher) and both went on to work for General Motors, in Kokomo and Anderson. So the southern part of the state is a bit new to me.

You were the founding director of the West Virginia Innocence Project and have a passion for working for those who have been wrongfully convicted. What inspired you to pursue that focus? Is there a particular story/memory of that type of work that stands out to you or you’re most proud of?

VB: I went to law school because I was a Rape Victim Advocate in college, where I helped survivors in the hospital as they sought treatment and also worked with doctors and police. I wanted to prosecute sexual violence and domestic violence to stop the offenders, and stop those cycles of violence. I got my dream job and became a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., prosecuting those cases. Only then did I learn that prison often does not end cycles of violence, and the criminal legal system often does not help or support survivors. A friend told me about a job opening at the Mississippi Innocence Project, so I applied and went down for an interview. The director of the project took me to meet one of their clients, Levon Brooks, who had recently been exonerated and freed from prison – after being wrongly convicted for a crime of sexual violence. I met him at his mother’s funeral. She fought for him for all those years, and then once he was released, she died shortly after. I asked him if he was angry to lose her, and he said no, she could finally lay her hammer down. What grace. Meeting Levon started my path to advocate for people wrongly incarcerated, particularly in rural communities like Mississippi, West Virginia, and now Indiana.

One story I’m particularly proud of is the basis of my book, Manifesting Justice: Wrongly Convicted Women Reclaim Their Rights. My client Leigh and her co-defendant Tami were wrongly convicted in rural Mississippi of a crime that never occurred, because they are lesbians. A dentist dreamt up fantastical allegations of bite marks, and because of false stereotypes about LGBTQ+ people as violent, deviant, and predatory, Leigh and Tami were wrongly convicted – of a crime that never occurred. I was proud to represent them and a court granted their freedom and reversed their convictions. But I think this is a key warning story, when we see these same stereotypes arising again nationally and here in Indiana – that LGBTQ+ people are dangerous. Indy Reads, a book store in Indianapolis that hosts a Drag Story Hour has received bomb threats. I talked about Manifesting Justice there in June, and about how queer people are being criminalized and the targets of hate crimes and violence because of our identities.

Indiana Law has a solid history in criminal law teaching and research. From Jerome Hall to the recently retired Joe Hoffmann, we’ve had a number of influential people here in that area. From an outsider’s perspective, could you talk a bit about our reputation in criminal law and how you might see us growing there moving forward?

VB: IU has an incredible criminal law faculty! Joe Hoffmann is a legend, particularly in post-conviction work, which is my area as well. I followed his work and expertise for years. IU further solidified its reputation when it hired Jessica Eaglin and later India Thusi, who are both superstars in the field. I am thrilled to be joining them as colleagues, they were a big part of my decision to join the faculty. They also told me how supportive the faculty is in general, even when giving feedback on scholarship from different points of view. (Editor’s note: After this interview was conducted, Prof. Eaglin announced she had accepted a position at Cornell Law School.)

Could you tell us about any research projects you’re working on now that you’re particularly excited about?

VB: One of my ongoing research projects is identifying little-known post-conviction claims, how they have been successfully litigated, and sharing those strategies and information with a broader non-academic audience of post-conviction litigators. The first part of this project was a Guide released this Spring, Miscarriages of Justice: Litigating Beyond Factual Innocence. I’m now working on Part II, with a working group of Conviction Integrity Unit prosecutors, academics, and post-conviction defense attorneys and innocence litigators. The focus is, perhaps not surprisingly, wrongful convictions of women.

Outside of academia, what are some of your favorite ways to spend your time?

My wife (Prof. Jenn Oliva) and I like to be outdoors – bicycling, hiking, kayaking. I also have a ukulele that I like to play and sing along; back in the day I was in the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, and it was a big part of my life. Everything comes full circle!

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law, working in collaboration with Indiana University Northwest, has established a new program to act as a pipeline into law school, the schools announced today (June 27).

The Indiana University Northwest Law Scholars Program will substantially reduce tuition for up to four IU Northwest graduates interested in pursuing a legal education in Bloomington, as well as supply qualifying students with dedicated faculty mentorship to help ensure their success.

“Over the past decade the Law School has partnered with a number of top colleges, universities, and programs to help make a legal education affordable and attainable. This program will deepen our engagement with IU undergraduate students, ignite their interest in law, and open their path into our excellent Law School. We are delighted to partner with IU Northwest in this effort,” said Indiana Law Dean Christiana Ochoa. “Indiana University’s campuses—from Bloomington to our regional campuses across the state—have produced outstanding law students over the years, and we are excited to welcome IU Northwest students into this program.”

The IU Northwest Law Scholars Program will provide scholarships amounting to approximately 50-100 percent of annual tuition, along with access to a formal mentoring program, reducing barriers to attending law school for students who might otherwise be unable to attend.

“This initiative will resonate with our communities and serve as the foundation for future growth,” said IU Northwest Chancellor Ken Iwama. “We are excited to offer some of our best and brightest students a direct pipeline to the Maurer School of Law, one of the country’s top law schools.”

The Law School has established similar partnership programs with a number of other institutions, including Dartmouth College, Vassar College, DePauw University, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Central State University, the U.S. Army, and more. Existing programs also include partnerships with many of the undergraduate programs on the IU-Bloomington campus.

Qualifying students must meet the criteria for admission to the Law School to be considered. For more information, see the Law School’s partnership program page.