FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT: Rita Semel and Daughter Elisabeth Semel Discuss Community Outreach and Social Justice at Grace Cathedral, 5/8/16
For Mother’s Day, Rita Semel, co-founder and former Chair of the San Francisco Interfaith Council; and her daughter Elisabeth Semel, law professor at UC Berkeley and the first director of the Death Penalty Clinic, will discuss being on the frontlines of social justice for two generations at Grace Cathedral on Sunday, May 8, 2016.
Rita Semel is co-founder and past chair of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, whose purpose is to celebrate diverse faiths and spiritual traditions, bringing people together to to build understanding and help the community. A graduate of Barnard College in political science, she became a copy boy at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1944 during World War II. She quickly advanced to reporter and covered, among other events, the signing of the UN Charter in 1945. After the war she founded the Jewish Community Bulletin and fought for civil rights in the 1960s; in the 1970s-1980s she worked with a group of clergy and lay leaders to assist the needy in the San Francisco community.
Elisabeth Semel has been the director of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley Law Faculty since 2001, supervising students in representing individuals facing the death penalty as well as tackling systematic issues relating to the death penalty in the federal court system. She has testified before committees of the U.S. Congress and the California legislature, and lectured at legal education seminars throughout the country on a myriad subjects related to criminal defense cases. A graduate of UC Davis School of Law, Elisabeth practiced as a public defender and in private practice in California. In 1997 she went to Washington, D.C. to serve as director of the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project, where she worked until joining the UC Berkeley law faculty.
The Semels will be interviewed by the Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, ninth dean of Grace Cathedral.