Two members of the Santa Clara Law faculty were honored at the President’s Faculty Recognition Reception on September 14.
Al Hammond received a President’s Special Recognition Award which goes to someone who has made a significant contribution to advancing student and faculty persity and inclusive excellence.
For the last several years, he has served as Vice Chair of the University Council on Inclusive Excellence, and he has chaired the Council’s Inclusive Excellence Roundtable. Under his direction, the Roundtable has helped identify shared norms and best practices, leading the University’s efforts to further persify recruitment, candidate pools and, ultimately, the faculty.
At the law school, where Professor Hammond currently holds the Sanfilippo Chair, his efforts include mentoring junior faculty, developing a new clinical course that permits law students to refine their skills in administrative and telecommunications law, and chairing the faculty appointments committee.
A former President of the Alliance for Public Technology, he is a nationally recognized expert in broadband policy. As he finishes a significant treatise on federal telecommunications law and policy, he has also been working on several national and regional telecommunications policy groups. He has also been an active member of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society as director of the Law and Public Policy Program.
Michelle Oberman received the Award for Recent Achievement in Scholarship which recognizes a tenured faculty member or senior lecturer whose scholarly or creative work over the previous five years represents a major contribution to a field of knowledge or to the arts.
Professor Oberman joined the law faculty in 2004 and quickly became one of the university’s most prolific and influential scholars. Since 2005, she has authored one book, five law review articles, two chapters, and two other pieces in interdisciplinary journals. When she wasn’t writing she was traveling and speaking: she presented more than 35 academic presentations around the world. She is perhaps the nation’s leading expert on how the law regulates the harm parents may do to their children. Readers describe her book as completely original, compelling, and interdisciplinary. It received the “Outstanding Book of the Year Award” from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2008. Her colleagues call her work “remarkable” and “inspiring,” noting the way she takes unusual risks—for example by incorporating perspectives from anthropology and creative writing—so that she can offer legal scholars new and unusual insights.
Congratulations to both honorees.
