Guberman Lectures
Joshua A. Guberman Lecture
The Joshua A. Guberman Lecture has been established at Brandeis University to honor the memory of a man whose passionate concerns were for individual well-being and social justice.
As a practicing attorney in Greater Boston, Mr. Guberman was well known for his keen intellect, his precise legal knowledge, his wide-ranging interests and his wise judgment. He was a counselor whose relationships with clients were characterized by a depth of caring rarely seen. Colleagues commented that he would become involved with the families of his clients and that, as time went on, he would serve their children. As the family businesses grew, so did the practice of Joshua Guberman.
After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he joined the firm of Brown, Rudnick, Freed and Gesmer. He served in the Second World War and then became a dedicated public servant, active in the American Jewish Congress, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Capital Punishment Information Services and many other groups. He also worked to improve the public schools. He was himself an excellent teacher.
Mr. Guberman’s colleagues recollect his work with the Boston Broadcasters, where his sense of fairness and good humor frequently helped resolve seemingly insoluble dilemmas. “When we sought his advice, we were assured of both precise legal answers and consummately just ones.”
In tribute to Joshua A. Guberman, his family has endowed an annual lecture in law and social policy at Brandeis University. The lectures are sponsored under the auspices of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the Legal Studies Program.
It is appropriate that the host for these lectures is a university named in honor of the great jurist, Louis D. Brandeis, whose profound concern for social justice is reflected in the social and economic issues he introduced in his judicial writings.
Through the lectures named in his honor, Joshua A. Guberman — who loved social justice and human beings — will be aptly remembered and linked with Justice Brandeis and the university which bears his name.
Past Guberman Lectures
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Punishment Culture and the Persistence of Mass Incarceration In Massachusetts Elizabeth Matos, JD
Elizabeth Matos, JD the Executive Director of Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts and was a staff attorney with the organization for over seven years. Elizabeth has been involved in litigation about solitary confinement practices regarding prisoners with mental illness, discrimination against deaf and hard of hearing prisoners, draconian classification practices, guard on prisoner assaults, and lowering exorbitant and monopolistic prison phone rates. She works closely with coalitions and alongside those most impacted, and advocates with the state legislature on the organization’s legislative priorities, including ending the predatory charging for prison phone calls, expanding access to visitation and voting rights, ending solitary confinement, establishing a prison building moratorium, and providing meaningful access to mental health services, among others. Prior to practicing prisoners’ rights law at PLS Elizabeth practiced housing, education, disability, and immigration law at South Coastal Counties Legal Services. Preceding her legal career, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Mozambique and served as the Immigrant Rights Coordinator for the MIRA (Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy) Coalition.
"How to Protect the Dreamers"
Elizabeth Badger, Esq.
Elizabeth Badger has worked in immigration law for the last 14 years, predominantly in legal services focused on representing non-citizen children, asylum-seekers, victims of domestic violence and other crimes, and persons in prolonged immigration detention. She has received the National Immigration Project's Daniel Levy Award for her work representing victims of immigration raids while at the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project, which awarded her in 2013 with its Pro Bono Mentor of the Year Award. She has successfully argued cases before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court regarding access to the courts for immigrant youth. From 2010-2013, Elizabeth taught in the Boston University School of Law's Immigrants' Rights Clinic. She has also worked extensively with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI) and other members of the Massachusetts immigration community on amicus briefs and other law reform projects.
"Capital Punishment in a Time of Drones and Beheadings: A Global Perspective on the American Death Penalty"
William J. Leahy, JD
Director
NYS Office of Indigent Legal Services
American criminal justice is strong on constitutional rights, but often falls short putting those rights into practice. Seen from a global perspective, the American system mixes high ideals with glaring inequalities and inconsistencies. Perhaps the greatest controversy—at home and abroad—surrounds the role of the death penalty in American justice. At a time when American foreign policy has confronted the problem of terrorism, the very definition of “just punishment” has grown more challenging.
Bill Leahy brings a lifetime of experience with criminal justice, the rights of defendants, and global engagement. For twenty-five years, he directed the public defender system for Massachusetts, serving as the Commonwealth’s chief advocate for the constitutional right to counsel for all criminal defendants. He has testified in many jurisdictions on behalf of expanding resources for defense counsel, and in opposition to the death penalty. After retiring from the Massachusetts system, he accepted the leadership of a task force in New York State dedicated to improving the quality of representation for poor people throughout New York.
Bill is also well known as a teacher and lecturer, both close to home, at Brandeis, and abroad in forums ranging from China to The Hague. He has served on international commissions to review criminal justice practices, and has spoken widely on the right to counsel as a bedrock principle. In March 2013, he spoke at the U.S. Department of Justice on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision defining the right to counsel, Gideon v. Wainwright. Bill’s mission is to clarify our challenge—over the next 50 years—of defining justice in a changing world.
"Guns & Public Health: Strategies to Reduce Gun Violence"
Professor David Hemenway
Harvard School of Public Health
"The Supreme Court and Election Year Politics: Myths vs. Reality in the Healthcare Debate"
Mary Ann Chirba, JD, D Sc, MPH and Alice A. Noble, JD, MPH
"Representing Prisoners with Serious Mental Ilness Trapped in a Nightmare: The California Prison Overcrowding Case"
Michael Bien '77, JD and Jane Kahn '77, JD
"The Thousand Dollar Genome: What Impact on Public Policies?"
Philip R. Reilly, MD, JD
Director of Clinical Genetics
Interleukin Genetics
"Tobacco on Trial: Risk, Responsibility, and Litigation"
Allan M. Brandt, PhD
Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
"From Loving Work to Working on Love: The Evolving Role of Government in the Relationships of Low-Income Americans"
Matthew W. Stagner
Director
Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population - The Urban Institute (Washington, D.C.)
"Whose Activist Court?"
Judge Rudolph Kass
Massachusetts Appeals Court (1979-2003)
"A Right to Care"
Deborah Stone
Heller School (1986-1997): David R. Pokross Chair in Law & Social Policy
"Does the U.S. Need an Immigrant Integration Policy?"
Michael Fix
Director
Immigration Studies Program - The Urban Institute
"The Political Science of Childhood"
Felton Earls
Professor of Social Medicine
Harvard Medical School
"Disabling the Americans with Disabilities Act: Judicial Activism and the Absence of 'Negative Capability'"
Aviam Soifer
Professor of Law
Boston College
"Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust 1945-1948: Dilemmas of Law, Care, and Bureaucracy"
Saul Touster
Brandeis University: Directior (Emeritus), Legal Studies Program Professor (Emeritus), Law & Social Policy, Heller School Professor (Emeritus), Legal Studies; American Studies Head (Emeritus), Humanities & the Professions Program
"How We Invest in Children and Families: Alternatives to Bureaucracy"
Harold A. Richman
Director
Chapin Hall Center for Children
University of Chicago
"Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values"
Peggy Cooper Davis
John S.R. Shad Professor of Law
New York University
"Federal and State Responsibilities in a Time of Increasing Violence"
Donald K. Stern
U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts
"Reflections on Health Care Reform"
The Hon. Harris L. Wofford
Former U.S. Senator of Pennsylvania
"The Epidemiology of 'Color-Blindnesss': Learning to Think and Talk About Racism Again"
Charles R. Lawrence III
Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
Antonia C. Novello, MD, MPH
Surgeon Genreal of the United States Public Health Service
Department of Health and Human Services
"Privacy, Autonomy, and Authority: A Discussion of Family Governance"
Carol Weisbrod
Professor of Law
University of Connecticut School of Law
"Growing Tensions in Law and Medicine: The Right to Refuse Treatment"
Sherman G. Finesilver
Chief Judge United States District Court, Denver, Colorado
"Medical Malpractice: Patients, Professionals, and the Courts"
Howard H. Hiatt
Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health
"The Nuremberg Code in an Age of Hype and High-Tech Human Experimentation: Legalistic Relic or Essential Rule?"
George J. Annas
Professor of Law and Medicine
Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health
"Refusing Psychiatric Treatment: Law and Policy"
Alexander D. Brooks
Professor of Law
Rutgers University Law School
Martha L. Minow
Professor of Law
Harvard Law School
Robert A. Burt
Southmayd Professor of Law
Yale Law School
"Privitization and the Purchase of Human Services (Wednesday); Fads, Fancies, and Social Movements: Public Policy Issues in Alcohol Problems"
Harold W. Demone, Jr.
Dean
Graduate School of Social Work
Rutgers University