On September 22, 2018, servicemembers and veterans from across Harvard’s schools joined Harvard University’s new president Lawrence Bacow for a barbeque sponsored by the Harvard Veterans Organization and Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization.
Category: Updates (Page 1 of 4)
AFA welcomed 1Ls and new LLMs today at our first meet and greet of the year. We also enjoyed raising the glass once again with old friends. It was exciting to have such a great turnout, especially from vets from militaries across the world. Here’s to a great year ahead!
We invite all in the Boston area to attend a very special occasion.
Friday, 3:30 pm at HBS, HBS doctoral student, Everett Spain, will receive the Army’s Soldier’s Medal for his actions in the aftermath at last year’s marathon bombings. Please RSVP.
Everett Spain is an active duty U.S. Army Colonel and Doctoral Student at Harvard Business School. Last year he was serving as a guide for Mr. Steve Sabra, a blind runner in the Boston Marathon. They were approximately 100 meters from the finish when the first bomb detonated. Col. Spain pulled Mr. Sabra through the finish and transferred him to another member of the support staff and raced to the site of the first blast to treat the injured. He proceeded to use his shirt as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding of one victim while simultaneously reassuring his frantic daughter. Col. Spain then moved to assist other injured and then to search for victims that might have been trapped or covered by debris; and to evacuate the building which he thought had been set on fire.
This semester has been an exciting one for HLS Armed Forces Association (AFA)! We have hosted three incredibly accomplished speakers, and we played a major role in the International Women’s Day display at HLS. Following is a recap of AFA’s spring semester 2014.
On February 18, John Bellinger, former Legal Advisor to State Department and current partner at Arnold & Porter, discussed the current legal challenges to the Administration related to evolving national security threats and international relations. The event was generously sponsored by Arnold & Porter’s Washington, D.C. office. By inviting Mr. Bellinger, AFA, in partnership with NSJ, NSLA, and LIDS, aimed to highlight the complexity and consequences of international relations and national security issues to how the law is best written and implemented in response to rapidly changing international dynamics.
On February 27, AFA was proud to host Shabana Basij-Rasikh for her lecture on School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), Afghanistan’s first all-girls boarding school. Shabana discussed how she plans to use SOLA to instill civic duty in her students and prevent brain drain in Afghanistan. She also discussed the real and complex challenges of waging war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda by waging peace on behalf of Afghan women and civil society. This event was made possible by WLA Women’s Venture Fund, LIDS, and Darren Gardner, who is an AFA member (JD Class 2014) and Shabana’s friend and colleague.
On March 3, 2014, Allyson Robinson, who formerly served as head of OutServe-SLDN and as an Army Captain, spoke to students and community members about the “three futures” of transgender Americans and military service at the first joint event at HLS sponsored by Lambda and AFA. Ms. Robinson discussed trans people’s experiences in the military and described her work with trans members of our armed forces and veterans. She also informed the audience of the considerable but surmountable obstacles to ensuring full and safe participation for transgender individuals in the U.S. armed forces. This event was sponsored by the HLS Milbank Tweed Fund.
On March 8, AFA was featured in The Harvard Gazette in a piece on the HLS International Women’s Day exhibit, which was organized by WLA and LIDS. The piece features Maria Parra-Orlandoni, AFA’s co-President and LIDS co-Vice President of Communications, who nominated Dana H. Born, a lecturer at the Kennedy School and retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General, for the exhibit.
[Photo by Stephanie Mitchell, Harvard Staff Photographer.]
When: March 3, 2014 at noon
Where: Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall 1015
Please join us at this landmark event, sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Armed Forces Association and Lambda, as well as Harvard Law School Milbank Fund!!
Last year brought profound change to U.S. military culture, particularly in regard to gender and sexuality. The combat exclusion for women came to an abrupt end. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans edged closer to truly equal service with the fall of the Defense of Marriage Act. Victims of sexual assault in the military brought Congressional attention to bear on the problem for the first time.
Despite all this momentous change, the military’s policy of barring qualified transgender people from serving has gone unadressed, at least officially. Yet from the hallways of the Pentagon to the hills of Afghanistan, military and civilian leaders are beginning to recognize that the time has come to review the policy. Some, both in and out of uniform, are organizing to change it.
Building on her experience as a West Point graduate, a military commander, and an LGBT civil rights advocate, former Army Captain Allyson Robinson will examine the policy as it exists today and efforts to bring it up to date with medical advances and the more inclusive practices of U.S. allies. She’ll then lay out three possible futures for advocates’ work to change the policy: the quick, quiet victory; the sequential series of skirmishes; and the protracted battle of attrition.
More about Allyson Robinson:
As principal of her own boutique consulting firm, Warrior Poet Strategies, Allyson Robinson advises select clients in organizational design, change strategy, diversity management, and movement entrepreneurship. In the past she led internal and external diversity initiatives at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization, where she conceived, created, and launched the organization’s social enterprise to train large organizations in diversity and inclusion. She later became the first transgender person to lead a national LGBT advocacy organization as executive director of OutServe-SLDN. In that role, she conceived and coordinated the public vetting of Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel on LGBT issues, getting him to make a decisive, written commitment to equality prior to his confirmation. She’s also served as an Army officer and an ordained Baptist pastor, studied at West Point, Oxford University, and Arizona State, and earned degrees in physics and theology.