The Center for Civil and Human Rights has awarded its first Summer Fellowship to Arianna Cook-Thajudeen, a second-year student at Notre Dame Law School. She will receive a $5,000 stipend to support her summer clerkship with the National Housing Law Project in San Francisco.
Ms. Cook-Thajudeen will assist the NHLP with its initiatives to increase housing access, defend the rights of those with disabilities, and help enforce federal policies on Section 8 housing vouchers, among many others. The decision to work with NHLP emerged from her conviction to pursue a purpose-driven approach to the law. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with NHLP attorneys to help advance housing rights for the poor and underrepresented,” she said. “Notre Dame has afforded me not only an excellent academic education, but a spiritual and socially conscious one as well. The NHLP’s dedication to human rights directly fosters CCHR’s mission to secure the rights and conditions for human flourishing.”
A commitment to mission-centered law is not new to Ms. Cook-Thajudeen. She previously participated an externship through AppalReD legal Aid, researching rural poverty in the Appalachian region, and the Common Good Initiative in Haiti, where she studied social justice in the context of NGO influence.
The CCHR Summer Fellowship is open to first and second-year Notre Dame Law Students for legal work that promotes civil rights and/or the enforcement of federal rights on behalf of underrepresented minorities. CCHR Summer Fellows organize an event at Notre Dame to educate their fellow students upon returning to campus in the Fall.
Originally published by at humanrights.nd.edu on May 04, 2017.