Preet Bharara Speaks at King Hall

  • by Kevin R. Johnson

Guest post by Afra Afsharipour, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Mr. Bharara served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017, and is currently a distinguished scholar at NYU School of Law. He is also the host of a very popular (especially among the students who attended) podcast, Café's "Stay Tuned with Preet."

Mr. Bharara reflected on his career working on some of the most significant insider- trading, corporate-corruption, and government-corruption cases over the past decade. These high-profile cases include the insider-trading case against SAC Capital, which resulted in the largest fine ever paid in the history of insider-trading prosecution.

Mr. Bharara spoke at length about commonalities that he saw among these various cases, particularly how corruption can stem from the culture of an institution, and a tone from the top.  He noted that institutional corruption often emanates from a culture of minimalism and a culture of silence with respect to compliance and ethics. Our students came prepared with incredibly insightful questions about current issues in politics, whether we need to change our whistleblower protection regimes, and ways to address corporate and government accountability. In addition, students inspired by Mr. Bharara's very accessible podcasts asked about the role of law students and lawyers in educating the public about various legal issues that have been hot in the press. Mr. Bharara also spoke about his hopes for the legal profession

and the inspirational role that lawyers have played, particularly over the past two years, in advocating for social justice and maintaining our legal norms.

I was delighted to be able to moderate the event, and to provide this special opportunity to our law students. In addition to students, a number of our faculty including Dean Kevin Johnson, Professor Jasmine Harris and Professor Donna Shestowsky attended the discussion. The discussion at the law school was then followed by a larger lecture by Mr. Bharara at the Mondavi Center. A very special thanks to our colleagues at the Mondavi Center, including Ruth Rosenberg (Director of Arts Education and Artist Engagement), for bringing us this wonderful event.