To combat racism and create meaningful reforms in the criminal legal system, the Zitrin Foundation of San Francisco is establishing a $2.5 million endowed fund at Northeastern University School of Law to support the Elizabeth Zitrin Justice Fellowship.
This is the single largest endowed gift to the law school in its history. Fellows will serve up to a one-year term at the School of Law, and will engage in litigation, writing amicus briefs, clinical supervision and work, policy advocacy, public education, restorative justice programs, educating law students, and research and scholarship.
“The Elizabeth Zitrin Justice Fellowship will exemplify the idea that justice is a value that runs through every part of our lives: from schools, to housing and voting suppression, to systemic racism, and to how we confront crime and incarceration. It is the fundamental purpose of our society that justice be provided for all people,” said Elizabeth Zitrin ’79, past president of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and vice chair of Witness to Innocence. Zitrin has pioneered collaborations between the death penalty abolition movement in the US and the international abolition community, convening the World Coalition’s General Assemblies held in the United States. Her recent work has focused on the power of innocence and the impact of exonerees in engaging prosecutors and other practitioners in ending wrongful convictions.
