Martha Minow
Martha Minow holds the 300th Anniversary University Professorship at Harvard University; she has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981 and served as dean for eight years (2009-2017). An expert in constitutional law and human rights, her work has addresses legal responses to social, political, and religious conflicts and discrimination and legal treatments of digital communications and technologies as well as constitutional law and democracy.
Her books include Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve the Freedom of Speech (2021); When Should Law Forgive? (2019); In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark (2010); Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good (2002); Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (1998); and Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law (1990). Recent articles include “Not Born a Democracy: Preconditions for Constitutional Democracies,” 67 William & Mary L.Rev. 135 (2025); “Justice in Divided Societies,” 4 American Journal of Law and Equality 402 (2024); “Walls or Bridges: Law’s Role in Conflicts over Religion and Equal Treatment,” 48 Brigham Young L. Rev. 1581 (2023); and “Distrust of Artificial Intelligence: Sources and Responses from Computer Science and Law,” with Cynthia Dwork, Daedalus (2022). Her next book, The Constitution Is Not Enough: Crucial Ingredients of Democracy, is forthcoming from the University of California Press.
The chair of the board of Massachusetts public media (GBH), Minow previously chaired the Board of Trustees of the MacArthur Foundation and co-chaired and the Access to Justice Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on the boards of philanthropies, including the Carnegie Corporation and the SCE Foundation and co-chairs the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law (CSTL), National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She also is a board member at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization devoted to strengthening electoral and voting processes in the United States.
Minow previously served on the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Countering Violent Extremism and on the Independent International Commission Kosovo. She helped to launch Imagine Co-existence, a program of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to promote peaceful development in post-conflict societies. Her five-year partnership with the federal Department of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology worked to increase access to the curriculum with digital resources for students with disabilities and resulted in both legislative initiatives and a voluntary national standard opening access to curricular materials for individuals with disabilities.
Her honors include the TUM Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Social Sciences and Technology (Munich, Germany, Nov. 13, 2025); The Hon. Robert A. Katzmann Award for Academic Excellence, (Burton Award Program, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2025); and lifetime achievement awards from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (2023) and the Women in Legal Education section of the American Association of Law Schools (the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award (2024)). She has received 11 honorary degrees (in law, education, and humane letters) from institutions in three countries.
She previously chaired the board of directors for the Revson Foundation (New York) and the John F. Kennedy Library Profiles in Courage selection committee. Following nomination by President Obama and confirmation by the Senate, she served on the board of the Legal Services Corporation, the bi-partisan, government-sponsored organization that provides civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. Her past board service also includes the American Bar Foundation; the CBS Corporation; the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law; the Covenant Foundation; the Jewish Women’s Archive, the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center. She previously chaired and still serves on the Scholars’ Board of Facing History and Ourselves.