The public events listed below are hosted by Brooklyn College’s Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities in honor of Professor Melissa Murray, our 2024-25 Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence.
For more information on Melissa Murray, please see:
https://www.brooklyn.edu/wolfe/hess/2024-25-hess-scholar-in-residence/
Free versions of Melissa Murray’s writings and other relevant readings are available online to the Brooklyn College community: https://libguides.brooklyn.cuny.edu/wolfe2024/melissamurray
The Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities: https://www.brooklyn.edu/wolfe/
Brooklyn College President Michelle Anderson and the Brooklyn College community welcome 2024-25 Hess Scholar-in-Residence Melissa Murray to campus.
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, co-host
of Strict Scrutiny podcast, MSNBC legal analyst, and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in Residence 2025
Douglas NeJaime, Anne Urowsky Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Simone D. Sanders, host of MSNBC’s The Weekend
Karen M. Tani, University Professor, Law School and Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
This urgent conversation on reproductive justice takes its inspiration from Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw’s article “Dobbs and Democracy” Harvard Law Review, 2024-01, Vol.137 (3), p.728-807.
https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-137/dobbs-and-democracy/
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, co-host of Strict Scrutiny podcast, MSNBC legal analyst, and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in Residence 2025
Kate Shaw, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Supreme Court contributor for ABC News, and co-host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny
Barbara Smith, author, activist, publisher of Kitchen Table Press, and Hess Scholar-in-Residence 2023
Moderated by: Naomi Braine, Professor of Sociology, Brooklyn College; author of Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion
Sponsored by the Frederic Ewen Civil Liberties and Academic Freedom Lecture and the Department of History at Brooklyn College
This conversation takes its inspiration from Melissa Murray’s article “Making History,” in which she asks, “What does it mean for the Court to 'do history'?"
Melissa Murray, “Making History,” 133 Yale Law Journal Forum 990 (2024)
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/MurrayYLJForumForeword_u1g7xjnu.pdf
Christen Hammock Jones, doctoral student in American Legal History, University of Pennsylvania
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, co-host of Strict Scrutiny podcast, MSNBC legal analyst, and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in Residence 2025
Christina D. Ponsa- Kraus, Professor, Columbia University School of Law
Noah Rosenblum, Associate Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and faculty director of the Vanderbilt Scholars Program and Katzmann Symposium; faculty affiliate of the Department of History at New York University
Moderated by: Anna Law, Kurz Chair of Constitutional Rights and Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Sponsored by the Frederic Ewen Civil Liberties and Academic Freedom Lecture and Brooklyn College’s LGBTQ+ Resource Center
Alina Das, Professor of Clinical Law and James Weldon Johnson Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and Co-Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic; author of No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, co-host of Strict Scrutiny podcast, MSNBC legal analyst, and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in Residence 2025
Chase Strangio, Co-Director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, recently presented oral arguments at the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the private plaintiffs in U.S. v. Skrmetti (2024)
Nelson Tebbe, Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and the current Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress; author of Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age
Moderated by: Paisley Currah, Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College; author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity
Sponsored by the Frederic Ewen Civil Liberties and Academic Freedom Lecture
Deborah N. Archer, President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); Margaret B. Hoppin Professor of Clinical Law; Associate Dean, Experiential Education & Clinical Programs; Director, Clinical & Advocacy Programs; Faculty Director, Community Equity Initiative at New York University School of Law
Lee Gelernt, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project and Director of the Project's Access to the Court's Program; Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, co-host of Strict Scrutiny podcast, MSNBC legal analyst, and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in Residence 2025
Professor Melissa Murray delivers the 2025 Hess Memorial Lecture exploring the how the
Roberts Court is reshaping US democracy.
Corey Robin, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College; author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, co-host of Strict Scrutiny podcast, MSNBC legal analyst, and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in Residence 2024-25.
Sponsored by the Department of Television, Radio, and Emerging Media
This conversation takes its inspiration from “A Podcast of One’s Own” by Strict Scrutiny podcast co-hosts Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, and Kate Shaw, published in the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law in 2021 (Vol.28.1).
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1285&context=mjgl
Maria Hinojosa, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist, Founder of Futuro Media, and
Distinguished Journalist in Residence at Barnard College; host of In the Thick podcast
Leah Litman, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and co-host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny
Eric Marcus, founder, executive director, and host of the Making Gay History podcast
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, co-host of Strict Scrutiny podcast, MSNBC legal analyst, and Robert L. Hess Scholar-in Residence 2025
Kate Shaw, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Supreme Court contributor for ABC News, and co-host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny.
Moderated by: Rachel Strauss, host of Latinos Out Loud podcast; Adjunct Professor in the Department of Television, Radio, and Emerging Media, Brooklyn College
Melissa Murray
Melissa Murray, the 2024-25 Robert L. Hess Scholar in Residence, is the Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. She teaches constitutional law, family law, criminal law, and reproductive rights and justice. She is a co-author (with Andrew Weissman) of the New York Times bestselling book The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary. Murray’s writing has appeared in a range of legal and lay publications, including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic. She is a legal analyst for MSNBC, and is a co-host of Strict Scrutiny, a Crooked Media podcast about the Supreme Court and legal culture. Murray is a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Virginia. Following law school, she served as a judicial clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Stefan Underhill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
