Dershowitz to Deliver Rice ’97 Commencement Address

CONTACT:
Michael Cinelli

PHONE: (713) 831-4794
E-MAIL: mcinelli@rice.edu

DERSHOWITZ TO DELIVER RICE ’97 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

Harvard law professor and noted celebrity defense
attorney Alan Dershowitz will deliver the commencement address at Rice
University on May 10, 1997, Rice president Malcolm Gillis announced today.

Dershowitz is currently the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard, a
chair established in honor of the Supreme Court justice’s work in constitutional
law.

Dershowitz graduated first in his class from Yale Law School and was editor
of the Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Chief Judge David Bazelon and U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, he was appointed to the Harvard Law
School faculty at age 25. He became a full professor at age 28, the youngest in
the school’s history.

In 1979, Dershowitz was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work in human
rights. In 1981, he was invited to China as a guest of the government to lecture
and consult on that country’s criminal code. In 1988, he served as Visiting
Professor of Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and lectured in Israel on
civil liberties during times of crisis.

Dershowitz has been described as one of the nation’s “most distinguished
defenders of individual rights,” and as “the top lawyer of last resort in the
country-a sort of judicial St. Jude,” by Newsweek and Time magazines
respectively.

In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith presented him with
the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award for his “compassionate eloquent
leadership and persistent advocacy in the struggle for civil and human rights.”

In addition to his work at Harvard and his private legal practice, Dershowitz
hosts a nationally-syndicated radio show and writes fiction and non-fiction
books based on his knowledge of the nation’s judicial system. His latest book,
“Reasonable Doubts” which examines the implications of the O.J. Simpson trial
verdict, was published by Simon & Schuster this year.

In 1995, Dershowitz published his first novel, “The Advocate’s Devil,” which
will soon be a television movie.

Dershowitz’s narrative of the von Bulow trial, “Reversal of Fortune: Inside
the von Bulow Case” (Random House 1986), was turned into an awardwinning motion
picture starring Glen Close, Jeremy Irons and Ron Silver.

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