‘My life was going to have to deal with issues of social injustice’
Dean Martha Minow of the Law School follows E.O. Wilson in the Experience series, interviews with Harvard faculty covering the reasons they became teachers and scholars, and the personal journeys, missteps included, behind their professional success. Interviews with Melissa Franklin, Stephen Greenblatt, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Steven Pinker, Laurel Ulrich, Helen Vendler, and Walter Willett will appear in coming weeks. Raised in Chicago’s northern suburbs and in Washington, D.C., Martha L. Minow is the daughter of Josephine Minow, a civic activist, and Newton Minow, who chaired the Federal Communications Commission under President John F. Kennedy and was also a longtime partner in a leading Chicago law firm. In addition, Newton Minow served as an adviser to Adlai Stevenson during his 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns. The twin realms of public service and the law would indelibly shape the aspirations of Minow and her two sisters, Nell and Mary. Minow joined the Harvard Law School...