Heaney ’09 Awarded Fellowship to Study Law Ethics

(By Anne Calder ’11)

Allison Heaney ’09 has been awarded a Fellowship at Auschwitz for the study Professional Ethics. A law student at Duke University, she will spend two weeks this summer traveling to New York, Poland and Germany.

The Fellowship enables students in law, medical, seminary, journalism and business to address contemporary and future ethical issues by looking to the past. In the context of Nazi Germany and Auschwitz, Heaney will analyze the responsibilities lawyers have to their clients and to society.

Heaney was a psychology major at Wesleyan, and is now pursuing a master’s degree in psychology while simultaneously getting her law degree. She also took a number of history courses on World War II and Nazi Germany, so is well versed in all contributing aspects of the fellowship. She expects she will offer a fresh perspective to the group.

After working as a research assistant to a counter-terrorism and international criminal law expert at Duke, Heaney is growing more and more interested in international law. “I’m beginning to see a lot of connections between how the world handled Nazi Germany and how we’re going to handle Al Qaeda now,” she says.