Rutgers University Will Honor Alumna Elizabeth Warren, ‘One of 100 Most Influential People In World’

Will Receive Honorary Degree May 27 in Newark

Elizabeth Warren,  who chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and served as chief adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, will  receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Rutgers University, her alma mater, on May 27, the Rutgers Board of Governors has announced.  Warren, one of the nation’s leading legal scholars, also will deliver the commencement address to the 250 members of the Class of 2011 of the Rutgers School of Law-Newark in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, at 10 a.m.

“It was a wonderful law school,” recalls Warren, who earned her Juris Doctor degree from the Rutgers School of Law-Newark in 1976.  “The law school took a little kid from Oklahoma and kicked open a thousand doors for me,” Warren has said. During her student years at the law school, Warren served as editor of the Rutgers Law Review.  She began her teaching career at Rutgers law school, in 1977.  She lived in New Jersey for nearly a decade while her husband worked for Bell Labs.

 In 2009 and 2010, Warren was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and by the National Law Journal as one of the 50 most influential women attorneys in America.  A renowned authority in the field of bankruptcy, contract, and commercial law and a leading academic consumer advocate on banking issues, Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard University.  She currently serves as Assistant to the President of the United States and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

Warren, who has testified before Congress on behalf of American families, was named chair the Congressional Oversight Panel for the $700 billion TARP in 2008.  She also served as chief adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. 

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Warren attended George Washington University and the University of Houston, where she graduated with a B.S. in 1970.  After earning her J.D. and subsequently teaching at Rutgers, she held positions at the University of Houston Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Honored for her dynamic teaching style and dedication to her students, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been principal investigator on many studies funded by the National Science Foundation and more than a dozen private foundations. 

Warren has written nine books, including national best-sellers, and more than a hundred scholarly articles dealing with credit and economic stress.  Her academic books on bankruptcy and debtor/creditor law are widely used in American law schools. 

Warren’s work as a consumer advocate on behalf of victims of abusive financial services company practices and unfair restrictions on consumer bankruptcy relief has drawn attention to the plight of women, the elderly, and the working poor in bankruptcy. Warren was the Chief Adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and she was appointed as the first academic member of the Federal Judicial Education Committee.  A former second vice-president of the American Law Institute, she also served as a member of the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion.  Warren has long advocated for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which was established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law last year. 

Widely honored for her work, Warren is interviewed frequently by the media had has appeared on many television news programs and in films such as Maxed Out and Capitalism: A Love Story.

High res photo available upon request.

Maps, directions, parking: http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/commencement/