The Institute’s Policy Clinic involves students in each of our policy teams to advance client goals: community equity, health/food, labor/human rights, and trade/climate. See links to the right for student projects and the work of each team.
Harrison Institute News
Featured News
September 15, 2021
Community equity
The Environmental Law Institute’s People Places Planet podcast featured Jennifer Li in its September 15 episode for a discussion with other climate experts about climate adaptation, environmental justice, and government readiness at the local, state, and federal levels. Jennifer and the other panelists were co-authors of the climate change chapter in ELI’s updated legal treatise, Law of Environmental Protection (2021-22 ed.).
September 9, 2021
Climate & Trade
The Freeman Foundation has funded work led by Matt Porterfield to provide legal analysis for TACTA, which is being organized by the Atlantic Council and its European partners. The project will convene policy makers and technical experts from both sides of the Atlantic to build consensus on climate policy that promotes rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, enhances the transatlantic trade relationship, and provides a new model for international cooperation on climate and trade. TACTA aims to avoid trade disputes that would impede putting a price on carbon and preventing job loss to countries that use fossil fuels to manufacture their exports.
April 1, 2021
Health & food
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded a 3-year grant of $970,000 to the Harrison Institute to organize a Just Purchasing Consortium (JPC). The JPC will counter forced labor, wage theft, health hazards, and other abuses endured by workers who supply food to universities. Other collaborators including the Workers’ Rights Institute and the Kalmanovitz Initiative at Georgetown, the University of Michigan, and the University of California system. The grant supports work in 2022 by Sara Hoverter, Robert Stumberg, and students in the policy clinic to draft a purchasing code and develop a dashboard to show hot spots for abuses of labor rights and urgent occupational health impacts, including COVID.
Featured Events
Virtual online workshop
Sustainable Food Purchasing
Sara Hoverter and Robert Stumberg presented to a workshop for the food-service directors of eight major universities. They introduced the Just Purchasing Consortium, a coalition of universities that has aims to leverage its collective purchasing power and implement “social sustainability” by setting standards for protecting the health and labor rights of workers who supply food that universities serve on campus. The event was hosted by the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, one of the first to adopt a purchasing code of conduct.
Virtual international events
Climate, Trade & Trans-Atlantic Cooperation
Matt Porterfield, Deputy Director of the Harrison Institute, spoke on trans-Atlantic cooperation, carbon pricing and carbon border adjustments at recent forums hosted by:
-- The Atlantic Council
-- The French Ministry for Economy, Finance and Recovery
-- The Institute for International Economic Law, Global Trade Academy
Virtual workshop series for Washington, DC
Negotiating Community Benefit Agreements
Students in the Community Equity team--Rolly Giberson, Linn Groft, and David Leeds—have led a series of workshops on negotiating community benefits agreements (CBAs) for community leaders in DC. The students were invited by Empower DC, the Fletcher Johnson Task Force, and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners in wards 4, 7, and 8 to share best practices for negotiating and drafting CBAs that can be legally enforced to encourage compliance by private developers. A full report on best practices and other resources (including a CBA template and database of past CBAs) will be available in Spring 2022.
