Education reform will be the topic of a conversation between the state commissioner of education and a social justice advocate at Vanderbilt Law School.
The 7 p.m. event on Wednesday Feb. 27, in Flynn Auditorium at Vanderbilt Law School, will feature Kevin Huffman, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education, and Oona Chatterjee, of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. Classmates from the New York University School of Law class of 1998, both have spent much of their careers working for school reform—but from different vantage points.
Huffman has worked largely within the system, including as a teacher and administrator with Teach for America. Chatterjee, co-founder of Make the Road New York, a community organizing and legal advocacy organization, has largely pressured it from the outside.
The event is free and open to the public. It will be moderated by Vanderbilt Law Professor Terry Maroney, who attended law school with Huffman and Chatterjee.
Chatterjee will also speak at 5 p.m. Tuesday Feb. 26 in Flynn Auditorium at the Law School on “The Young Lawyer as Social Justice Entrepreneur.” She will discuss how lawyers can make a difference even at the very start of their careers. This event is also free and open to the public.
Both events are presented by the Social Justice Program at Vanderbilt Law School, which is at 131 21st Ave. S.