March 8, 2002

C.U. Law School Alumnus Donates Unknown Sum

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Cornell University Law School alumnus Jack Clarke L.L.B. ’52 and his wife Dorothea have donated an undisclosed sum to endow the Clarke Center for International and Comparative Legal Studies, which has been in operation at Myron Taylor Hall since January.

Support

The center, which was approved by the Cornell Board of Trustees in October, is chiefly an administrative center for many “existing international law programs at the Law School that have operated under the auspices of the Berger International Legal Studies Program,” according to Larry S. Bush, executive director of the Clarke Center. The center “will provide support to faculty members in connection with conferences, research projects and other academic activities.” He added that the endowment was actually a “series of gifts, established over a period of a few years.”

Among the Berger programs now overseen by the Clarke Center, Bush said, are “the Berger Speaker Series; a visiting scholars program; joint-degree programs with universities in Paris and Berlin; student exchange programs with universities in Germany, Hungary, Spain, France and Australia; and the Paris Summer Institute of International and Comparative Law.”

Additionally, he said, the center “will administer the Clarke Middle Eastern and East Asian Legal Studies programs, which will sponsor speakers, conferences, research and related support to faculty and students.”

New Positions

The endowment also created one professorship each in both comparative law and East Asian legal studies.

“The Clarkes’ endowment also funds the Clarke International Fellowships in Feminist Legal Theory,” said Linda Myers, a senior writer at the Cornell News Service.

Preconceptions

The concept for the Clarke Center came “about two years ago,” Bush said, and the proposal was announced in August 2000.

Lee Teitelbaum, the Allan R. Tessler Dean of the Law School, was unavailable for comment.

Archived article by Andy Guess