Only now, for the first time in the history of the venerable 130-year-old journal, is the president a black woman.
ImeIme Umana, 24, the third-oldest of four daughters
of Nigerian immigrants, was elected on Jan. 29 by the review’s 92
student editors as the president of its 131st volume.
The
Harvard Law Review — which, like other law reviews, allows students to
hone their legal writing skills and gives scholars a forum in which to
thrash out legal arguments — is often the most-cited journal of its kind
and has the largest circulation of any such publication in the world.
Its
presidency is considered the highest-ranking student position at the
ferociously competitive law school and a ticket to virtually anywhere in
the legal realm. Half of the current Supreme Court justices served on
the Harvard Law Review, though none as its president.
“It
still feels like magic that I’m here,” Ms. Umana said in an interview,
though her fellow students said it was not magic at all but her sharp
legal mind, intense work ethic, leadership ability and generosity of
spirit that catapulted her to the top.
Ms.
Umana’s emergence now has raised questions about why it took so long
for a black woman to reach the pinnacle of the review and how her
perspective may influence a publication that has for most of its
existence been led by white men.
When
Ms. Umana talks about the law, she speaks through the prism of her race
and gender. Not far from her mind are the black women who in recent
years died after encounters with law enforcement.
“I’m constantly reminded of people like Natasha McKenna and Tanisha Anderson and Sandra Bland, whose relationships with the law were just simply tragic,” she said.
Unlike
the vast majority of graduates of the nation’s top law schools, Ms.
Umana says she has no interest in joining a high-paying corporate firm.
Her dream for now is to become a public defender, a goal she set after
an eye-opening internship last summer in the public defender’s office in
the Bronx. She plans to work this summer with the public defender in
Washington.
“A
lot of the clients I worked with that summer and since have looked a
lot like me,” she said. “They are disproportionately represented on the
unfortunate end of the legal system, so it struck a little closer to
home.”
Born in State College, Pa., Ms. Umana graduated from Susquehanna Township High School
in Harrisburg, where her father, who died in 2010, was a statistician
for the state. She is a 2014 graduate of Harvard College, where she
majored in government and African-American studies.
She
was elected president of the law review in an intense 12-hour period of
deliberations that stretched over two days — typical for this annual
process — and included a rigorous evaluation of each candidate’s
portfolio of work and responses to a written questionnaire, questions at
a candidate forum and a writing exercise.
Ms. Umana was one of 12 candidates for president, including eight minority students and eight women.
“I think our team saw in her what so many people have seen in her fo
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