April 09, 2018

Three Lewis & Clark Law Professors Awarded Prestigious Fulbright Grants

Lewis & Clark Law professors Samir Parikh, Jim Oleske, and Ozan Varol were awarded highly prestigious Fulbright grants for international research during the 2018-19 academic year.

Lewis & Clark Law professors Samir Parikh, Jim Oleske, and Ozan Varol were awarded highly prestigious Fulbright grants for international research during the 2018-19 academic year.

The Fulbright Scholarship Program sponsors U.S. and foreign participants in study or teaching exchange programs around the world in order to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Awards are granted to recipients based on superior academic achievement, leadership experience, and the ability to act as an ambassador on behalf of their home country.

“We heartily congratulate our three professors on their recognition by the Fulbright program,” said Lewis & Clark Law School Dean Jennifer Johnson. “It is a testament to their abilities as legal scholars and educators.”

Professor Parikh is the Kenneth H. Pierce Faculty Fellow and also serves as the director of Lewis & Clark College’s Bates Center for Entrepreneurship and Leadership. He received a Fulbright-Schuman Grant, which recognizes Parikh’s innovative scholarship and will allow him to spend six months of his upcoming sabbatical at various institutions throughout Europe. 

As a Fulbright-Schuman Scholar, Parikh will research the evolution of European Union insolvency policy and its effect on corporations and sovereign nations, as well as how austerity implementation has affected Spain and Italy.

Professor Oleske has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in the United Kingdom, where he will pursue research at Cardiff University’s Centre for Law & Religion. His Fulbright project will focus on a comparison of the law governing religious exemptions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

“I am extraordinarily excited about the opportunity to study alongside leading scholars of religious liberty at the Centre for Law & Religion,” said Oleske. “It will be an ideal setting in which to pursue my Fulbright project, which will explore how and why the law governing religious exemptions has developed differently in the UK and the US, the consequences of that divergence, and the different possible paths the law in each jurisdiction may follow in the future.”

Professor Varol is a comparative constitutional law scholar, whose interdisciplinary research lies at the intersection of law and political science. He is also author of the best-selling book, The Democratic Coup d’État (2017) published by Oxford University Press. 

Varol was awarded a Fulbright grant to study authoritarian regimes in Europe. His research proposal included plans to study how a new generation of authoritarian regimes cloak repressive measures under the mask of law. However, for personal reasons, Varol had to decline his award.