Alan Clarke could have become a lawyer for banks and big corporations.
While doing pro-bono work as a lawyer in Virginia, he realized his passion for social justice and human rights.
“When I started practicing law, I became, not a conservative, but much more establishment-oriented,” Clarke said.
But after a while, he began to realize the legal system is stacked against some of society’s most vulnerable and changed the way he looks at things.
“You start to see the oppression in all sorts of different areas. You start seeing the social oppression of native peoples, you start seeing the social
oppression of African-Americans and criminal defendants, death row inmates, of labour.
“It was basically a move to more social justice that was almost entirely by accident.”
Clarke has brought his expertise in international law and human rights to St. Thomas University.
The Utah Valley University professor is the criminology department’s endowed chair this semester and is teaching a fourth-year seminar course on issues in international human rights law.
He is also known for his work opposing the death penalty and is now researching genocide.
STU’s appreciation of social justice, including its human rights curriculum, was one thing that drew him here.
“St. Thomas seems to be one of the more socially conscious universities from what I can tell,” he said.
The criminology department’s focus on social justice also impressed him. Usually, criminology departments either focus on statistics or training police officers, he said.
“Some schools tend to get so caught up in that and they lose the human element.
“St. Thomas strikes me as a really nice balance.”
Although Clarke misses being in a courtroom, he wasn’t able to take on as many social justice cases as he would have liked to and financially survive.
“To earn a living, I was representing drug dealers, basically, which wasn’t a lot of fun. How many times can you represent meth lab owners and cocaine distributors before you get a little tired of that?”
He snatched the opportunity to teach at Ferris State University in Michigan when it came up, then at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside before heading to Utah Valley.
“I miss the excitement of being in court and doing social justice at a practical level, but I like the idea of writing and giving talks and teaching classes,” he said.
“I can teach what I want.”
It’s an exciting time for international human rights law, Clarke said. Crimes against humanity, genocide and torture are becoming outlawed and those laws are starting to have some teeth.
At the end of his course, he hopes some students will be inspired.
“If you can infect students with…enthusiasm for doing good in the world, then you’ve sort of indirectly done good not only in your lifetime but 50 years after you’ve long passed.”
