FIFTEEN QUESTIONS

Susannah B. Tobin ’00 is the assistant dean for academic career advising and a senior lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She is also managing director of the Climenko Fellowship Program. She serves on the graduate council for The Harvard Crimson and Cambridge Historical Mission.

FM: So how did you get involved with The Crimson?

SBT: I comped The Crimson my freshman fall, same as you. I had spent a lot of time on my high school newspaper, so I thought that it was something I might enjoy. I actually hesitated to comp right away because I tried some other things and I thought I had already done the newspaper, and maybe I didn’t need to continue to do it. But I kept being drawn back towards 14 Plympton, and once I started, I never looked back.

FM: Why did you choose the Editorial Board?

SBT: I thought I had lots of opin ions and wanted to share them. And the comp at the time was a mixture of news comp training, and also editorial training. And I liked the option to do some reporting, but then also work on opinion writing as well.

FM: Though, in the past, you wrote op-eds criticizing Har vard, you’re now a professor at Harvard Law School. What does it mean to simultane ously be critical of and appre ciative of an institution like Harvard?

SBT: I think that’s a really good and hard question. I think we are critical of things that we care about. And so when I was a student, I loved my experiences as an undergraduate at Harvard and also had opinions about ways it could be improved for ev eryone. And so I really welcomed the opportunity to share both sides of that experience to say, ‘I love it here, and also here’s how it could be better.’ I think we don’t spend time criticizing things that we don’t think are worth try ing to make better.