RIP Vanessa Merton, Immprof Scholar and More
The immprof community lost an important member this week: Vanessa Merton.
Vanessa started her academic career as a clinical instructor and then professor at NYU School of Law. She later became a founding faculty member at CUNY law school. She spent the last three-and-a-half decades of her career at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University where she directed the Immigration Justice Clinic, providing free legal services to indigent noncitizens seeking to regularize their status, reunite with their children, and fight deportation.
Among her many professional accomplishments, Vanessa assisted travelers detained at airports under the 2017 Trump Executive Orders, spent spring breaks volunteering at immigrant detention centers on the southern border, and established a 200-student emergency operation to assist people affected by 9/11.
She won award after award for her work, including Pace’s 2019-2020 Jefferson Award for Public Service, Pace Law Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, the Graduating Class Award for Outstanding Law Professor, the Servant of Justice Award for advocacy for Haitian refugees, the Pace LALSA Alianza Award, the Pace Immigration Law Society Persistence Award, and the Excellence in Teaching Award of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (the highest honor for an immigration law professor), and she was named a “Lawyer Who Leads by Example” by the New York Law Journal. (This isn’t even the full list — check out her CV!)
Vanessa’s family has set up a a digital festschrift to honor her life.
May her memory be a blessing.
-KitJ