Helping Esteemed Faculty Flourish

Jeffrey D. Forchelli ’69 is a member of the Brooklyn Law School Board of Trustees and managing partner of Forchelli Deegan Terrana.

The Forchelli family has long-standing ties to Brooklyn Law School as alumni and generous supporters. The most visible example is the Jeffrey D. Forchelli Conference Center at Feil Hall, with panoramic views of New York Harbor. But two endowed faculty chairs also bear the Forchelli name.

One, endowed in 2003, is named for Jeffrey D. Forchelli ’69, a member of the Brooklyn Law School Board of Trustees and managing partner of Forchelli Deegan Terrana, while the other, endowed in 2004, bears the name of his father, Don Forchelli ’31, who died when Jeffrey was 14.

“He was very proud of being a lawyer,” Jeffrey Forchelli said. “My grandparents came from Italy in 1902, and my father was first-generation American. They were really very proud that he became a lawyer. He was the star of the family, their oldest son.”

Brooklyn Law’s history is intertwined with three generations of Forchellis. Jeffrey’s uncle Vincent graduated Brooklyn Law in 1940, his cousin Charlie is a 1971 alumnus, and Jeffrey’s daughter Nicole graduated in 2007. “What I wanted to do with the faculty chairs is make the family name part of the history of the Law School,” Forchelli said.

While a Brooklyn Law School student, Forchelli fondly remembers classes with “many brilliant professors,” including Joseph Crea, a Torts professor and legendary dean. “He encouraged us to be creative. He was dynamic and a little unconventional,” Forchelli recalled. Other notable professors were former deans Jerome Prince, who taught Evidence, I. Leo Glasser, who became a federal judge, as well as Professor Clark Miller, who taught Contracts.

The Jeffrey D. Forchelli Professor of Law chair will be assumed by incoming Professor Amy Gajda, a journalist turned lawyer recognized internationally for privacy and media law expertise. She and her husband, David D. Meyer, the Law School’s incoming dean, join from Tulane Law School. Her scholarship explores the tensions between social regulation and First Amendment values, particularly the shifting boundaries of press freedoms and rising anxiety about the erosion of privacy.

The title of Don Forchelli Professor of Law was assumed this academic year by Professor Catherine Y. Kim, who teaches Immigration Law, Administrative Law, Anti-discrimination Law, and Civil Procedure. Her research focuses on courts and agencies as engines for social justice reform, particularly as it relates to immigrants and communities of color.