Good governance is an issue that affects everybody, even in the United States.
Each year, four midcareer legal professionals from around the world arrive at the University of Washington carrying the weight of unresolved justice in their home countries — land rights denied, courts undermined, human rights unprotected. Through the Barer Institute for Leadership in Law and Global Development, they find not only a curriculum but a community of shared struggle, funded by the transformative legacy of a Seattle attorney who helped draft the Civil Rights Act and a wife who understood the world from the inside of it. A $45 million bequest from the Barer estate now ensures that this quiet, rigorous work of building just societies will continue — and expand — for generations.
- Across Uganda, the Philippines, Kenya, and beyond, legal systems strain under the gap between what the law promises and what power actually delivers.
- Four fellows a year is a small number for a large problem — but the institute's $45 million bequest now multiplies its reach through new J.D. scholar cohorts, mentorships, and internships.
- Fellows don't just study law — they extern at tribal courts, intern at human rights organizations, and sit with mentors who show them how justice actually moves through institutions.
- The curriculum deliberately unsettles lawyers: changing the law, fellows learn, is never enough — real change requires crossing into policy, community organizing, and the private sector.
- Alumni are already translating their year in Seattle into action — judicial reform in Uganda, Indigenous land advocacy in the Philippines, human rights frameworks embedded in African agribusiness.
Jo arrived at the University of Washington carrying a specific problem: more than two hundred Indigenous communities in the Philippines, legally acknowledged but practically unprotected, their lands treated as negotiable by developers despite the law. After years in private practice and then as clerk of the Philippine National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, he came to Seattle's Barer Institute to study how other places had faced the same questions.
The institute selects four midcareer fellows each year — lawyers, judges, civil servants, human rights advocates — and covers their tuition and living expenses for a year of postgraduate study in sustainable development. The program was built on the commitment of Stan Barer, a UW Law graduate who helped draft the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and his wife Alta, a former flight attendant who remained deeply engaged in global affairs. When Stan died in 2021, their estate gave forty-five million dollars to the university — one of its largest bequests ever — funding not only the international fellowships but a new cohort of J.D. Barer Scholars drawn from current UW law students.
Victoria Katamba arrived in 2024 as a sitting judge on Uganda's High Court, shaped by a childhood under Idi Amin's dictatorship. Her year at the institute reframed her understanding: good governance, she discovered, is not Uganda's problem alone. It is everywhere. Stella Wangechi Ngotho came a decade earlier from Kenya's National Commission on Human Rights, looking for a rare intersection of sustainability, business, and human rights. She returned home to coordinate Kenya's first national action plan on business and human rights and eventually built grievance frameworks across sub-Saharan Africa. The gap between theory and practice, she says, is enormous — and the fellowship gave her the confidence to cross it.
The curriculum is intentionally flexible. All fellows take a foundational course with faculty director Anita Ramasastry, then draw from law school offerings, the Jackson School, and the Evans School of Public Policy. They intern, they are mentored by practicing judges and lawyers, and they sit alongside peers whose struggles mirror their own. Land rights, judicial independence, corporate accountability — these are not isolated national problems but shared human ones. The Barers understood this, inviting each fellow to dinner and asking about their work back home. That personal investment, now sustained by a forty-five million dollar legacy, is what continues to send legal leaders back into the world — better equipped, more connected, and more certain that the law, carefully wielded, can close the distance between promise and justice.
Jo arrived at the University of Washington School of Law carrying a specific problem home with him: the legal limbo of more than two hundred Indigenous communities in the Philippines, none of them recognized as sovereign nations. The sticking point, as he describes it, is land. His country's laws acknowledge Indigenous ownership, but that acknowledgment means little when developers and businesses treat those same lands as negotiable territory. After years in private practice across Southeast Asia, Jo had moved into government work—he became clerk of the Philippine National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, a position that gave him access to power but also a clearer view of its limits. That's what brought him to Seattle, to the Barer Institute for Leadership in Law and Global Development, where he could study how other places had grappled with the same questions.
Jo is one of four fellows the institute selects each year, all of them midcareer lawyers, judges, civil servants, or human rights advocates from around the world. They come for a year of postgraduate study in sustainable development, their tuition and living expenses fully covered. The program exists because of Stan Barer, a Seattle attorney who graduated from UW Law in 1963 and spent his early career helping draft the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Barer and his wife, Alta—a former flight attendant who had traveled the world and remained deeply engaged in politics and education—became among the university's most committed supporters. When Stan died in 2021, the couple's estate made a gift that transformed the institute: forty-five million dollars, one of the largest bequests in UW history. The money funds scholarships for the international fellows, but it also creates something new—a cohort of J.D. Barer Scholars, current law students at the university who show leadership potential and genuine interest in global issues.
Victoria Katamba arrived at the institute in 2024 as a sitting judge. She had been appointed to the Ugandan High Court and now presides over the Masaka High Court Circuit, handling both civil and criminal cases. She had grown up under Idi Amin's dictatorship and carried that history into her work on the bench. When a relative in the Seattle area invited her to visit, she found her way to campus and saw in the Barer Institute something she had been looking for: a place to deepen her thinking about justice, rule of law, and what it actually means for governance to serve its citizens. What she discovered over her year was that good governance is not a problem unique to Uganda. It's a challenge everywhere, including in the United States. That realization shifted how she understood her own work.
The curriculum is flexible by design. All fellows take a foundational course taught by Anita Ramasastry, the faculty director and inaugural chair of the institute. From there, they choose from law school courses and electives offered through the Jackson School of International Studies and the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. They also work with mentors—practicing lawyers and judges—and intern at local organizations. Jo spent the summer externing at the Puyallup Tribal Court, learning how a tribal judiciary actually functions. Katamba was mentored by a King County Circuit Court judge. Ramasastry emphasizes that the institute is trying to teach lawyers something they often resist: that changing the law is not enough. They need other tools. They need to work across disciplines, with policymakers and community leaders and business people, not just within the legal system.
Stella Wangechi Ngotho came to the institute in 2014 while working at Kenya's National Commission on Human Rights. She was looking for a place that understood the intersection of sustainability, business, and human rights—a rare combination. At the UW, she learned to identify labor abuses and gender-based violence in supply chains and to design strategies to prevent them. When she returned to Kenya, she coordinated the country's first national action plan on business and human rights. She became the first human rights manager for a major agribusiness, building a framework for raising and addressing grievances. Now she works across sub-Saharan Africa, pushing responsible business practices into policy and the private sector. The difference between theory and practice, she says, is enormous. "There's a difference between what you read and what you actually need to do to support businesses to integrate human rights." The fellowship gave her that practical confidence.
What binds the fellows together is not just their individual projects but their willingness to see their own problems reflected in each other's work. A judge from Uganda, a human rights advocate from Kenya, an Indigenous rights clerk from the Philippines, a legal professional from Cuba or Ukraine—they sit together, they talk, and they realize that the challenges they face are not unique. Land rights, judicial independence, corporate accountability, the gap between law and justice—these are shared problems. The Barers understood this. They made a point of getting to know each fellow personally, inviting them to dinner, asking questions about their work back home. Stella Wangechi Ngotho remembers those conversations. "Stan and Alta are very close to my heart," she says, "because they gave us this opportunity." That opportunity—to study, to mentor, to intern, to think alongside peers from around the world—is what the forty-five million dollar bequest now sustains. From Uganda to Ukraine, from Cuba to the Philippines, Barer fellows are putting their education to work, promoting good governance and human rights on a scale that reaches across continents.
Citações Notáveis
Although our laws recognize ownership of land by Indigenous peoples, Indigenous owners often experience conflicts with developers and businesses.— Jo, Philippine National Commission on Indigenous Peoples clerk
There's a difference between what you read and what you actually need to do to support businesses to integrate human rights.— Stella Wangechi Ngotho, Barer Fellow alumna and UN human rights consultant
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does a judge from Uganda need to study law in Seattle? Doesn't she already know how to do her job?
She knows how to judge. What she didn't know was how judges in other places think about the same problems—how they balance independence with pressure, how they build trust in the system. And she discovered that good governance isn't just a Uganda problem. It's everywhere.
So it's not about learning new laws. It's about learning how to think differently.
Exactly. Ramasastry says lawyers often think changing the law is the answer. But you can't change anything alone. You need to understand business, policy, community, how systems actually work.
What about Jo and the Indigenous communities? How does a year in Seattle help him with land rights in the Philippines?
He's interning at the Puyallup Tribal Court this summer. He's seeing how a tribal judiciary actually operates, what tools they use, what works. He's bringing that back home.
And the money—forty-five million dollars is enormous. Why did the Barers care so much about this?
Stan Barer helped draft the Civil Rights Act in 1964. He spent his life on these questions. He and Alta believed in shared prosperity, in connecting the university to the world. They wanted to invest in people who were already committed to change, who just needed the space and resources to think deeper.
Do the fellows stay in touch after they leave?
They become part of a network. They've seen each other's problems, realized they're not alone. That matters when you go back home and the work gets hard.