Poetic legacy
“You are part of me, O all your quartiers.” So wrote A. M. Klein in 1948 in “Montreal,” a poetic ode to his home city. Two generations later, Alana Klein, BA 97, a McGill University law professor and granddaughter of the poet (and lawyer), is committed to the same ideal.”
“I was drawn to Concordia because it felt very embedded in the community, which was important to me,” reveals Klein, who earned her BA in psychology. “It has an interesting, diverse set of people and I felt it reflected Montreal and the world.”
Law won out over psychology, however. “The law is so analytical that there is a lot of room to investigate the relationship between the world and different kinds of norms,” she explains. “I felt it enabled me to engage more directly with social and political issues.”
This engagement was enhanced when, one summer during her law studies at McGill, Klein was selected to serve as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour. “It was reminiscent of my Concordia education in that Justice Arbour’s chambers were also a kind of research lab. Judges are not permitted to talk about cases outside of the courthouse, so she bounced ideas off her clerks, which was incredibly stimulating,” Klein recalls. “She had three clerks that summer and she’d have us over for pizza-making nights that would end with us dancing in her living room.”
As Klein was nearing completion of her graduate studies at Columbia University in New York City, she based herself in Toronto and worked for the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. She immersed herself in questions of social marginalization, inclusion and exclusion. “I found myself taking on all sorts of HIV/AIDS-related issues, from injection drug use to problems facing women in sub-Saharan Africa,” she says. “I loved it.”
Still, her roots pulled her back to Montreal to pursue a fellowship at McGill in 2008. A year later Klein started as full-time professor in the Faculty of Law, where she has researched such thorny issues as the criminalization of HIV transmission exposure. “In Canada it is a criminal offence to not disclose if you are HIV-positive and have risky sex, but the idea of criminalizing sexual behaviour is controversial, especially in the public health community. My research can mediate among the public health community, people affected by HIV/AIDS, and the criminal law com-munity on such issues,” she says. Her courses also include explorations of criminal procedure, evidence and the relationship between law and poverty. Klein also stays engaged with local groups such as the Mile End Legal Clinic. “My grandfather’s concern with connecting to other communities is something I have taken on,” she says. “That idea influenced my desire to study at Concordia and, more recently, to stay in Montreal and do work that is meaningful to the larger community.”