Advancement
$6 Million Gift Creates Chair in Civil Rights Law
That’s when Colleen Haas — then a Stanford Law student with a keen interest in civil rights that stretched back to her childhood — met Henderson, an assistant dean who started the school’s first program for minority admissions.
Henderson was pushing to diversify Stanford’s student body, and Colleen — a scholarship student working at the San Francisco civil rights firm Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan, and Brotsky in addition to her studies — identified with his values.
“We just connected,” Colleen says. “I had an appreciation of what Thelton had done in his life to that point, and obviously he could see where my interests were. That became the basis of a very close friendship.”
When she married Bob Haas, a fourth-generation UC Berkeley alumnus, Henderson became his friend, too. The relationship got stronger over the years, through Colleen’s work as a civil rights lawyer, Bob’s longtime career at Levi Strauss & Co., and Henderson’s service on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California from 1980 to 2017.
“It’s just a privilege to be able to say we’re friends — deep friends,” Colleen says. “He’s a model of the best a person could be, and his life is a tribute to this country. So it’s with total happiness that we’re able to endow this chair.”
The gift also creates an untenured faculty position to teach in the area of civil rights law. One stipulation is that at the start of each academic year, the professor holding the chair will speak to the law school classes they teach to give a brief biography of Henderson and discuss how students have translated their opportunity at UC Berkeley Law into creating a greater good for society.
During his 37 years on the bench — seven as the district’s first Black chief judge — Henderson presided over many seminal cases. He earned a reputation for judicial acuity and sensitivity, and for being a steward of the environment.
Henderson says the endowed chair is hugely significant to him: “To have an endowed chair of civil rights at one of the best law schools in the country — and the world … I’m almost wordless.”
Henderson calls his friendship with Colleen and Bob “very special and wonderful,” with many personal memories as well as professional ones. For example, he says, the couple reached out to then-Sen. Alan Cranston about nominating Henderson to the judiciary.
“They’ve been very good to me, very generous to me, and a very important part of my growth and my life,” Henderson says.
UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says he’s deeply grateful for the gift to honor Henderson and highlight the important field of civil rights law.
“Thelton Henderson is truly a hero,” Chemerinsky says. “He is a role model for all of us in how he has used law — as a civil rights lawyer and as a judge — to advance justice. He is truly one of the most decent people I have ever met. I am thrilled that as long as there is UC Berkeley Law there will be the Henderson Chair in Civil Rights Law.”
Calls for Merging Profit and Purpose
A strong belief in intersectional work, and in UC Berkeley Law, sparked their recent gift to launch the new Social Enterprise Clinic. Led by Director Alina Ball (see Flourishing Faculty), the clinic will offer transactional counsel for businesses, for-profit and nonprofit, that use market-based strategies to advance economic and racial justice.
“It’s possible to do good while also doing well — profit and purpose can work together,” Carolyn says. “There are a lot of commonalities between for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. For both, it’s important to lead with purpose, develop revenue sources that provide financial sustainability, and manage resources effectively.”
Greg sees the clinic’s focus mirroring that of commercial law firms: representing entities, not individuals. He says that work involves establishing entities, merging or changing them, executing deals between them, navigating disputes with consumers, and handling issues between entities and employees, investors, and government agencies.
“Students can get their fingernails dirty with this type of work, thus providing experience firms see as valuable,” Greg says. “It also gives them a real-world opportunity to see if they enjoy the work involved in representing social enterprise entities. One thing my 40 years of experience taught me is that happy lawyers are better lawyers.”
Helping such enterprises make sound decisions and find a viable path forward was a big draw for Carolyn, who earlier in her career served as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and taught economics at Saint Mary’s College. She has also provided strategic guidance and financial oversight on nonprofit boards.
Carolyn relished the idea of providing transactional legal assistance and financial management advice where it’s needed most: “For many enterprises, lack of knowledge is a barrier to success, and this issue can be particularly acute in economically marginalized communities.”
Named a Chambers USA leading lawyer in the California Litigation – General Commercial category since 2013, Greg marvels at the robust options in UC Berkeley Law’s Clinical Program — seven in-house clinics and eight more through the East Bay Community Law Center.
“The range of clinical opportunities has expanded significantly in the last 40 years,” he says. “They help students better understand what’s involved in practicing law in various areas and begin to apply the tools of their law school education.”
In addition to their generous seed pledge, Greg and Carolyn plan to help students network in the social enterprise space, host an annual event at their house bringing together clinic students and others active in that space, and share their professional insights.
Be it providing outside counsel for local businesses with a social or environmental mission, assisting with corporate governance, guiding regulatory compliance, navigating formation issues, or aiding in contract drafting, they value an adaptable model.
“Different organizations have different needs at different times,” Carolyn says. “One strength of the Social Enterprise Clinic is that it’s able to meet the enterprises where they are.”
Fueling Their School’s ‘Powerful Engine’
“To my generation, having access to a place like Berkeley and the University of California was a huge thing,” he said. “Berkeley is this powerful engine — an engine of social mobility, an engine of the future, an engine of competitiveness, and it’s all done within the context of its public service mission.”
Bertelsen received this year’s Citation Award, UC Berkeley Law’s highest honor recognizing exceptional contributions to the school, the bar, the bench, legal scholarship, the state, the nation, and the world.
Professor Daniel A. Farber received the Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award, Monique E. Liburd ’08 was honored with the Young Alumni Award, and senior federal district court Judge Maxine M. Chesney ’67 was given the Judge D. Lowell and Barbara Jensen Public Service Award.
Farber, who joined the faculty in 2002, talked about the upward trajectory of UC Berkeley Law under two transformative deans: the late Christopher Edley Jr. and current Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who’s led the school since 2017.
“It’s really a different school than it was 20-some years ago when I arrived,” he said.
Liburd, now senior trademark counsel at Google, serves on the UC Berkeley Law Alumni Association Board and described the rewards of staying involved with the school and mentoring prospective, current, and recently graduated students. She said institutions like UC Berkeley Law — and the involvement of its alumni — are more crucial than ever with the rule of law and access to legal services under threat.
“Supporting our law school means fighting for our ideals and investing in the next generation of leaders who will uphold justice, champion fairness, and protect the vulnerable,” Liburd said. “That’s why I’m so committed to my service with the Alumni Association.”
Chesney recalled how she was one of 15 women in her 1L class, and that her law school experience instilled confidence to strive for a career outside the accepted norm at the time. Over the years, when things got tough, she would repeat a mantra about UC Berkeley Law.
“When obstacles arise, as they will in anything worth doing, I just stop and say to myself, ‘You went to an outstanding law school. You can do this.’”
New Project to Reimagine Oil and Gas Industry
Tapping broad expertise across campus and throughout multiple sectors, CLEE aims to help reimagine the oil and gas industry in feasible, productive, and strategic ways, which could include increased use of carbon removal, carbon capture and storage, and diversification to alternative fuels and products.
“We’re thrilled Chris chose CLEE to lead the effort,” says Executive Director Louise Bedsworth. “I think it’s a testament to our ability to build multidisciplinary teams, develop practical and effective policy solutions, forge productive relationships with policymakers, and convene diverse stakeholders to tackle complex problems.”
With the growing loss of lives and homes from extreme weather events like floods in Texas and fires in Los Angeles compounded by soaring home insurance costs and other harmful effects, Larsen says, “Everyone is paying for the costs of climate disruption except the biggest polluters, who helped to create this mess in the first place. That has to change.”
The project will also examine how communities dependent on industry jobs and tax revenues could adapt. Larsen sees a role in advanced geothermal systems for industry workers, and thinks they could help devise ways to capture pollution from the atmosphere.
“The oil and gas industry has solved some of the most vexing engineering challenges our society has faced, employed some of the most talented scientists and engineers in history, and helped power our global economy,” Larsen says. “There’s a lot to criticize, but if we’re being fair, there’s also a lot to appreciate.”
Larsen, who established a UC Berkeley Law fellowship program last year that funds new graduates in their first year of criminal justice-focused public interest work, notes some promising trends: battery prices dropping 40% in the last year, solar expanding quickly worldwide, and roughly half of new cars in China being electric.
As climate impacts accelerate, he says “people will demand that big polluters pay their fair share for the damages they’ve helped cause — just like health insurers demanded that tobacco companies pay for medical costs associated with smoking.”
While Bedsworth knows it will require “a lot of work to make sure we can do this in an orderly way that supports workers, communities, and develops climate-positive pathways for the industry,” she believes “this project will help to develop that roadmap.”
Expanding and Serving Their Community
Mar, fellow Co-Chairs Irene Liu ’06 and Thomas Chow (UC Berkeley ’00), and then Co-Chair Andy Song developed a plan for asking law firms to help fund summer fellowships for UC Berkeley Law students.
“It was very gracious of the other co-chairs given that they aren’t connected to UC Berkeley Law,” says Liu, who is an executive in residence with the school’s Executive Education program. “In partnership with the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, we raised enough to give $140,000, which is really rewarding.”
Founded in 2011, BAAAGC celebrated reaching 100 Bay Area GCs in 2018 and then donated $100,000 to the Portrait Project, which studies Asian Americans in the law. This year, it renewed that support and also helped create a new summer fellowship program at UC Berkeley Law, which funded jobs for rising 2Ls Shreya Kareti and Gabriel Kong.
Kareti advocated for people who are navigating the intersection of domestic violence and immigration laws for the South Asian American Justice Collaborative, crafting legal training materials and helping provide legal resource clinics and education sessions for the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community in central Pennsylvania and Ohio.
“It’s a historically displaced population that settled in the United States as refugees over the past two decades, and has been targeted without due process since March of this year,” Kareti says. She adds that the BAAAGC gift “enabled me to fight for the South Asian community’s legal and civil rights, which is especially crucial in this moment.”
Working for Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, Kong helped tenants facing eviction from legally underserved communities that often can’t access the legal system due to language and cultural barriers. He co-drafted a housing discrimination complaint, negotiated delayed move-outs and stays, and assisted clients with the thorny procedural aspects of eviction cases.
“Housing insecurity disproportionately impacts communities of color and creates downstream, negative health outcomes for those at risk for eviction,” Kong says. “The (BAAAGC) funding allowed me to devote my summer to eviction defense with fewer personal and financial constraints. I’m extremely grateful.”
Chow says the gift to UC Berkeley Law, unique in that it came from numerous law firm contributions rather than a single firm, “is a win-win for us and for the students receiving these summer fellowships.”
