Charles Ogletree is a Faculty Fellow Emeritus at the Berkman Center.
Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and Vice Dean for the Clinical Programs, is a prominent legal theorist who has made an international reputation by taking a hard look at complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for everyone equally under the law. Professor Ogletree has examined these issues not only in the classroom, on the Internet and in the pages of prestigious law journals, but also in the everyday world of the public defender in the courtroom and in public television forums where these issues can be dramatically revealed. Armed with an arsenal of facts, Charles Ogletree presents and discusses the challenges that face our justice system and its attempt to deliver equal treatment to all our citizens. He furthers dialogue by insisting that the justice system protect rights guaranteed to those citizens by law.
In 1998, Professor Ogletree was awarded the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law chair at Harvard Law School. He holds honorary doctorates of law from North Carolina Central University, New England School of Law, Tougaloo College, Amherst College, Wilberforce University, and the University of Miami School of Law.
Professor Ogletree earned an M.A. and B.A. (with distinction) in Political Science from Stanford University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa. He also holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School where he served as Special Projects Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review.
Charles Ogletree began his illustrious career as a staff attorney in the District of Columbia Public Defender Service. He quickly rose through the ranks serving as Training Director, Trial Chief, and Deputy Director of the Service before entering private practice in 1985 in the law firm of Jessamy, Fort & Ogletree. Professor Ogletree is formerly "of Counsel" to the Washington, D.C. firm of Jordan, Keys & Jessamy.
Professor Ogletree is the author of the forthcoming book, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education, published by W.W. Norton & Company, to be released in April of 2004 (www.alldeliberatespeed.com). He is the co-author of the award-winning book, Beyond the Rodney King Story: An Investigation of Police Conduct in Minority Communities, and he frequently contributes to the Harvard Law Review, among other publications. He has written chapters in several books, including If You Buy the Hat, He Will Come, in Faith of Our Fathers: African American Men Reflect on Fatherhood and The Tireless Warrior for Racial Justice, which appears in Reason & Passion: Justice Brennan's Enduring Influence. Privileges and Immunities for Basketball Stars and Other Sport Heroes? appears in Basketball Jones, published in 2000. In addition, Professor Ogletree's commentaries on a broad range of timely and important issues have appeared in the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe, among other national newspapers. His commentary on how to make Black America better was published in the 2001 compilation, Lift Every Voice and Sing. Most recently, Professor Ogletree has contributed a chapter entitled The Rehnquist Revolution in Criminal Procedure, which appears in The Rehnquist Court: Judicial Activism on the Right, published in 2002.
In 1991, Professor Ogletree served as Legal Counsel to Professor Anita Hill during the Senate Confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. His reflections on those experiences are contained in The People vs. Anita Hill: The Case for Client-Centered Advocacy, a chapter of the book, Race, Gender and Power in America. He was profiled in an article in The American Lawyer entitled, Tree Time. More recently, Professor Ogletree was prominently featured in award-winning author Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's compelling book, I've Known Rivers, and in a Boston Globe magazine article entitled, Faith in the System.
In 2003, he was selected by Savoy Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential Blacks in America and by Black Enterprise Magazine, along with Thurgood Marshall, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., and Constance Baker Motley, as one of the legal legends among America's top black lawyers. In 2002, he received the National Bar Association's prestigious Equal Justice Award. In 2001, he joined a list of distinguished jurists, including former Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, and civil rights lawyers Elaine Jones and Oliver Hill, when he received the prestigious Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit from the Washington Bar Association. He also held the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics at the University of Oregon Law School and was a Scholar in Residence at Stanford University. In 2000, Professor Ogletree was selected by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America. He has received numerous awards, including the National Conference on Black Lawyers People's Lawyer of the Year Award, the Man of Vision Award from the Museum of Afro-American History in Boston, the 1993 Albert Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Law School, and in 1995, The Ellis Island Medal of Honor and The Ruffin-Fenwick Trailblazer Award named in honor of the first African-American man and woman to graduate from Harvard Law School. In 1996, the National Bar Association honored him with its Presidential Award for The Renaissance Man of the Legal Profession. He was also awarded the International House of Blues Foundation Martin Luther King, Jr. Drum Major Award, The Justice Louis Brandeis Medal for Public Service, and the 21st Century Achievement Award from the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.
In addition to his strong academic focus, Charles Ogletree's national media experience and exposure is considerable in its scope. In 2001 and 2002, Professor Ogletree moderated the nationally-televised forums, State of the Black Union and Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, produced by Tavis Smiley Productions. Professor Ogletree also served as the moderator of four of producer Fred Friendly's seminal ten-part series, Ethics in America, which aired on PBS. Since 1990, he has moderated dozens of similar programs, including Hard Drugs, Hard Choices, Liberty & Limits: Whose Law, Whose Order? and Credibility in the Newsroom. Professor Ogletree has also appeared as a guest commentator on Nightline, This Week with David Brinkley, McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, Crossfire, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Cochran & Company, Burden of Proof, and Meet the Press as well as other national and local television and radio programs. He served as NBC legal commentator on the O.J. Simpson case.
Professor Ogletree also serves as the Co-Chair of the Reparations Coordinating Committee, a group of lawyers and other experts researching a lawsuit based upon a claim of reparations for descendants of African slaves, along with Randall Robinson, co-author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks.
Professor Ogletree has a long record of commitment and service to public schools and higher education. He completed ten years of service to his alma mater, as a member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees, and for five years served as the national Chairman of the Stanford Fund, the University's principal fund raising organization. Professor Ogletree's development activities have also raised substantial funds for Harvard Law and the UDC, where he currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of the District of Columbia, a land grant and historically black college and university. He continues to serve as the Chairman of the Board of the B.E.L.L. Foundation, which is committed to educating minority children in after school programs in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In addition, Professor Ogletree served as one of the founding members and trustee of the Benjamin Banneker Charter School in Cambridge, a school that provides educational opportunities in math, science and technology to minority children in a public school setting. Professor Ogletree attended public schools in his hometown of Merced, California, and has set up a scholarship fund there that now annually provides support for needy students who want to pursue higher education. He has also provided scholarship support for students at Harvard Law School, Stanford University, and the University of the District of Columbia.
Professor Ogletree has been married to his fellow Stanford graduate, Pamela Barnes, since 1975. They are the proud parents of two children, Charles Ogletree III and Rashida Ogletree. The Ogletrees live in Cambridge and are members of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Office: Hauser 516
Assistant: Nichele McClendon (ogletree [at] law.harvard.edu)
(617 496-2054)
Phone: (617) 496-2054
Fax: (617) 496-3936
Email: ogletree [at] law.harvard.edu
