Biography
Jeannie Suk Gersen is the John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she has taught courses on constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, family law, sexual assault and harassment, campus misconduct, the law of art, fashion, and the performing arts. She is a Contributing Writer for The New Yorker.
Before joining the Harvard faculty in 2006, she served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court, and to Judge Harry Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She served as an Assistant District Attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. She has written three books and many articles in scholarly journals and general media. Her book, At Home in the Law, was awarded the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Prize for the best law and society book of the year. She has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and Harvard Law School’s Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence.
Professor Gersen earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1995, a D.Phil in Modern Languages (French literature) in 1999 from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a J.D. In 2002 she graduated from Harvard Law School where she studied as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. Professor Gersen was born in Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1979 when she was six, settling in Queens, New York. She attended Hunter College High School, graduating in 1991, and received the school’s Distinguished Graduate Award in 2016. As a teenager, she was a student at the School of American Ballet, and studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In 2010, she became the first Asian American woman to receive tenure at Harvard Law School. She is married to Jacob Gersen, has two children and two stepchildren, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Articles, Publications, and Appearances
TED Talk
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How understanding divorce can help your marriage (TEDWomen, December 2019)
The New Yorker Columnist
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Could the Supreme Court’s landmark LGBT-rights decision help lead to the dismantling of affirmative action? (June 27, 2020)
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How the charges against Derek Chauvin fit into a vision of criminal-justice reform (June 17, 2020)
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Can the Constitution reach Trump’s corruption? (June 9, 2020)
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How concerning are the Trump administration’s new Title IX regulations? (May 16, 2020)
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A fair examination of the allegations against Joe Biden can strengthen the #MeToo movement (May 6, 2020)
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The Supreme Court confronts Trump’s challenge to the separation of powers (May 2, 2020)
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Finding real life in teaching law online (April 23, 2020)
Select Video Interviews and Articles
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Harvard Prof: Harvard needs some “soul searching” on admissions process (Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien, June 30, 2018)
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A custom-tailored course: Fashion Law Lab (The Harvard Gazette, January 24, 2017)
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An imperfect process: How campuses deal with sexual assault (CNN, December 21, 2015)
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The Castle Doctrine (Dan Rather Reports, March 20, 2012)