Radcliffe Day 2024 in Photos
On Radcliffe Day 2024, our community gathered to honor a distinguished jurist with a fierce commitment to the ideals of due process and equal protection under the law.
After a tumultuous year, and before another cycle of unknowns, Harvard Radcliffe Institute friends gathered under clear skies for Radcliffe Day 2024 to celebrate the promise and the good, all while encouraging ongoing work and steadfast hope.
Radcliffe Medalist and Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor set the tone in an honest, heartfelt and hopeful conversation with Martha Minnow, 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard Law School, which took place after a glowing and humorous introduction by actress and fellow Bronx native Rita Moreno.
This was preceded by an amazing panel of multigenerational activists, scholars, and attorneys that discussed the long arc of equality and justice in America and how best to work together towards an equitable future.
In photos by Tony Rinaldo, this was Radcliffe Day 2024.
Harvard Radcliffe Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin and Martha Minow, Harvard Law School 300th Anniversary University Professor, share smiles in Fay House before the event. Minow, who was a law school classmate of Sotomayor’s, sat in conversation with the Supreme Court justice.
The panelists (left to right) Mary L. Bonauto of GLAD, Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak, the activist Jerome Foster II, and Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law pose with Brown-Nagin (third from left).
The Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award–winning actor Rita Moreno, who honored her friend Sotomayor before her talk, poses with fans, including the panel moderator Murray, in Fay House.
The multigenerational panel discussed the long arc of equality and justice.
At age 22 the youngest member of the panel, Jerome Foster II—an environmental activist and the youngest member ever of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council—spoke about the importance of grassroots organizing. “We’re able to change people’s perceptions about what is morally just,” he said.
The audience was one of the largest to attend Radcliffe Day.
Dissents on the Supreme Court, which Justice Sotomayor is famous for writing, can shape public understanding of court decisions and whether they are correct. Sotomayor’s dissents, he said, often “shine a bright spotlight on flaws in the criminal justice system. So, there’s a lot that goes on in the court that’s above—or sideways to, or horizontal to—the actual dispute being resolved.”
After reading a citation that praised Sotomayor’s “fierce commitment to the ideals of due process and equal protection under the law,” Brown-Nagin bestowed on the associate justice the 2024 Radcliffe Medal.
Students from Watertown High School who take part in Radcliffe’s Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), along with their Harvard mentor, ELP staff, and their school liason, pose with Brown-Nagin during the lunch.
Students from Prospect Hill Academy and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School who are part of the ELP and their school liaisons pose with Brown-Nagin.
Margaret H. Marshall, 2012 Radcliffe Medalist and herself a distinguished jurist, listens intently to the program. Marshall was the 24th chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
