HWS News
25 February 2024 • Alums • Faculty Campus Lawyers and Federal Law By Andrew Wickenden '09
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, HWS General Counsel Lou Guard ’07 discusses the evolution of federal regulation related to colleges and universities over the past 50 years and the ways institutions have responded.
In April, Harvard University Press will publish All the Campus Lawyers: Litigation, Regulation, and the New Era of Higher Education by HWS General Counsel Lou Guard ’07 and Professor of Economics and former HWS President Joyce P. Jacobsen.
The book explores changes in the legal landscape around higher education since the 1960s and how colleges and universities can respond to legal pressures while remaining true to their educational missions.
This month, the Chronicle of Higher Education looked at these issues in an article featuring Guard, who explains how increasing federal regulation — such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, the gender-equity law known as Title IX, and Civil Rights legislation — has prompted institutions to hire general counsels.
The article notes that when “done well…the job uses that influence to balance a focus on risk with a focus on what’s in the college’s best interest. ‘A properly functioning general counsel is steeped in the institutional values,’ Guard said. ‘If done properly, the general counsel is an institutional steward.'
All the Campus Lawyers provides a vital, up-to-date assessment of the impact of legal concerns on higher education and helps readers make sense of the most pressing trends and issues, including civil rights; free speech and expression; student life and wellness; admissions, advancement and community relations; governance and oversight; the higher education business model; and on-campus crises, from cyberattacks to pandemics.
A cum laude graduate of Hobart College and Cornell Law School, Guard joined HWS in 2014. He provides legal advice and counsel across institutional areas, assists the president with all major initiatives and projects, and is responsible for the strategic direction of legal affairs for HWS. Guard serves as Assistant Secretary to the Board of Trustees and is the primary governance advisor to the Board. He also teaches higher education law in HWS' Master of Arts in Higher Education Leadership program. He previously also served as Chief of Staff to President Mark D. Gearan. A Geneva native, he is admitted to practice law in New York and Pennsylvania. Guard has worked at leading law firms in Philadelphia, Pa. and Rochester, N.Y. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Journal of College and University Law, where his written work has also appeared, and is an active member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA). He has served as a panelist at Stetson Law School’s National Conference on Law and Higher Education, as a NACUA panel moderator, and as a consultant to the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) on issues of collegiate mergers and acquisitions. He has taught and guest lectured on business law and higher education law topics at Hobart and William Smith and Boston College Law School, respectively, and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School where he teaches the seminar on the law of higher education.
Jacobsen served as President of Hobart and William Smith from 2019-2022 and since then has taught in the HWS Economics Department where she is a full professor. An expert on labor economics, particularly the economics of gender, Jacobsen is the author of scores of journal articles and book chapters exploring sex segregation, migration and the effects of labor force intermittency on women’s earnings, among other topics, as well as the economics of wine and other collectibles. She is the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award, given to an individual who has furthered the status of women in the economics profession. Her books include Advanced Introduction to Feminist Economics, The Economics of Gender, Queer Economics: A Reader (co-edited with Adam Zeller) and Labor Markets and Employment Relationships (with Gilbert L. Skillman). She previously served as the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Wesleyan University. She served as Dean of Social Sciences and Director of Global Initiatives at Wesleyan, and then Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. At HWS, Jacobsen teaches econometrics, intermediate microeconomics and introduction to investments. She earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University and M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and graduated from Harvard University, magna cum laude, with her A.B. in economics as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
