3/11/02-Boston College Law School is pleased to welcome back Father Robert Drinan, S.J. to the law school for a discussion titled "The Role of Lawyers in Protecting Human Rights." The discussion, sponsored by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and open to the public, will take place on Wednesday, March 13 at 4 p.m., in room 120 of the East Wing.

"It is an honor for us to welcome Fr. Drinan back to the law school," said Professor Kent Greenfield, faculty advisor for the American Constitution Society. "He's one of our own, but more importantly he is one of the nation's leading advocates for international human rights. He is an inspiration to all of us."

Fr. Drinan, former Dean of BC Law and a former Congressman, has recently published The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights (Yale: 2001). In addition to his teaching duties as a professor at the Georgetown Law Center, Fr. Drinan serves as a priest, lawyer, politician, and activist. He has received twenty-one honorary degrees, and has served as a visiting professor at four American universities. Drinan served for years in the United States Congress as a Representative from Massachusetts, where he was a member of various committees and the chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee. As a Congressman, his travels included official Congressional delegations to Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. He has also served on private delegations to the Netherlands, South Africa, Sudan, Israel, and the Soviet Union and privately sponsored human rights missions to Chile, the Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, France, and Vietnam.

Fr. Drinan is currently serving as a member of the ABA House of Delegates and is a past-chair of the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the International League for Human Rights, the Lawyer's Committee for International Human Rights, the Council for a Livable World Educational Fund, Americans for Democratic Action, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He is one of the founders of the Lawyer's Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control and the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry.