On Wednesday, the Oberlin American Civil Liberties Union Campus Action Team organized an alumni panel comprising legal experts who work for the national ACLU. The panel, held in Dye Lecture Hall, invited students and community members to learn about careers defending civil rights and hear about the panelists’ current work with the ACLU.
The panel consisted of Louise Melling, OC ’82; Jesse Wing, OC ’87; and Terrence Dougherty, OC ’91, and was facilitated by College third-year Arev Lima Boudakian. The conversation focused on the panelists’ career paths, the current social justice climate, and questions from students and community members.
College third-year and chair of the ACLU Campus Action Team Matthew Grogan said that the panel aimed to make students aware of career paths involving community engagement and activism work.
“I hear complaints from a lot of students and faculty that Oberlin College is going maybe a little too far in the direction of favoring career-centric goals as opposed to its social justice and advocacy roots,” Grogan said. “Not to say those things aren’t valuable, but given that people feel pretty dissatisfied with that, I was really hoping this event would be a way to marry those two things — to show people a way that they can have a real, tangible impact on the world and advocate for the better of other humans, while also still advancing their own careers and being able to contribute to society.”
The panelists discussed their careers and experiences working in civil liberties advocacy, spanning a range of issues, from reproductive rights to prison reform and nonprofit advocacy.
Melling spoke about her role as the deputy legal director at the ACLU as well as director of their Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center of Liberty. Her work focuses on issues including reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, disability rights, and religious liberty. She encouraged students to pursue work that aligns with their interests and values.
“I feel like being in the ACLU makes me a better person because I have this opportunity to engage with people and think about these questions,” Melling said. “That’s the thing that makes me so hopeful about students coming, is I think Oberlin is a place where people can have those kinds of conversations and learn from one another and really leave richer and bring a sense of empathy and justice.”
Melling discussed her involvement in the ACLU’s abortion litigation strategy following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. She also addressed the impact of the current political climate on transgender rights and her work on gun rights litigation, including on the case United States v. Hemani.
Wing spoke of his work practicing civil rights at a private law firm while serving on the ACLU Board of Directors. His cases often involve suing law enforcement and prisons for racial profiling, excessive force, and inadequate medical care. He also described his work on the case Prison Legal News v. Lehman, which challenged the Washington Department of Corrections’ decision to censor and ban subscriptions to Prison Legal News, a publication that reports on prisoners’ rights.
“I hope that people, whether students or members of the community, are now familiar enough with the whole portfolio of the ACLU that they can really appreciate how deeply embedded into the fabric of civil rights and civil liberties the ACLU is,” Wing said. “A lot of people don’t know that all of the talk about the First Amendment started with the ACLU in the 20th century.”
Dougherty spoke about his role as the deputy executive director and general counsel of the ACLU, where he focuses on internal compliance and political law.He addressed his work with the ACLU centering around confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and developing solutions to help employees financially. He noted that the current political climate presents ongoing challenges to democratic institutions and emphasized the importance of staying informed about civil rights issues.
“One of the several people who founded the ACLU, Roger Baldwin, his statement that we always keep on hearing is that ‘No fight for civil liberties ever stays won,’” Dougherty said. “It can always be pulled back, it can always move forward. And so that alone, I hope, can give people some hope that we have not given up forever the importance of justice and respect for individuals and their freedoms.”
College second-year and board member of the ACLU Campus Action Team Abigail Bachman emphasized that it is especially important in times of uncertainty and civil unrest to show students that they have power.
“It will be nice to see people that are from our school that have gone off to do something important and to hear about the important work the ACLU is doing, because I personally feel like the ACLU is a very bright beacon of hope,” Bachman said. “It can feel a bit reassuring to hear that there [are] these really smart, important people that are helping out and that we could be those people one day.”
