Mentorship in law school leads to Fulbright scholarship for UCalgary alum

Being able to follow in your mentor’s footsteps is something special. For Joshua Sealy-Harrington, JD’13, it’s led him to graduate studies and a prestigious Fulbright scholarship.

The mentor is Jonnette Watson Hamilton, a professor in the Faculty of Law, who, more than 25 years earlier attended Columbia University for her Master of Law and raved about the experience, specifically a course with Patricia Williams, an American legal scholar and a champion of critical race theory.

“Being able to take a class in critical theory with the same professor that my mentor did is really special,” says Sealy-Harrington, who recently co-authored a paper with Watson Hamilton on colour discrimination. “The intersection of race and law is the thread that ties all of these experiences together, and I am really grateful to have this opportunity.”

Watson Hamilton knew right away her student was headed for a career in academia.

“I think I knew that Josh was headed for graduate school and an academic position when he was in my first-year Property Law class,” she says. “I certainly knew by second year, when he talked me into supervising a directed research project for him, in part because he told me he wanted to publish it — which he did.”

Sealy-Harrington will study at Columbia University for a year in their course-based master’s program, exploring the areas of criminal law, civil liberties, and critical race theory. He also plans on taking advantage of being at a very prestigious institution with leading academics in a variety of areas.

“Having so many options to learn from some of the world’s best in so many areas is such a great opportunity. It’s like ‘Oh, you want to learn this? We have the world’s leading expert on that area and she will teach it to you this fall!’,” he says.

Primarily, Sealy-Harrington will be taking courses to help his long-term goal: to become a law professor in Canada.

“Clerking for the Supreme Court of Canada for two years really reinforced my desire to become an academic,” he says. “I like to sit with a problem, pour a cup of tea, lean back in my chair and ponder the universe. Clerking gave me that opportunity, and academia offers that opportunity as well.”

Pursuing graduate studies in the United States is very expensive, and Sealy-Harrington is extremely grateful to Fulbright Canada for making it easier to relax and focus on his studies. As he points out, especially in the area of law, “Managing debt often compels recent graduates from doing what they want into doing what they must for financial reasons. This scholarship relieves that stress for me a lot.”

“My relationship with Josh is a good illustration that mentoring can be as rewarding for the mentor as for the mentee,” says Watson Hamilton. “I am, of course, pleased that Josh will get his LLM from Columbia, the source of my own graduate degree, but my attendance there 26 years ago is not why he is at Columbia. I like to think that my advice that he factor the location of the school into his decision-making, because there is a lot to be learned from a place like New York City, and that he make potential supervisors a significant criteria, because that is who will introduce you into their network if you are lucky, did play a role in his decision.”