Faculty Profiles

The Office of Diversity and Community Initiatives Celebrates the Work of Professor Nat Gozansky.

The Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) honored Emory School of Law and Emory Law Professor Nathaniel E. Gozansky at its Southeast Region 40th anniversary celebration, Thursday, Dec. 11, at the Atlanta History Center. Emory Law was recognized for its role in the development and implementation of CLEO’s summer institute, which seeks to increase minority law school enrollment.

CLEO was founded as a nonprofit entity of the American Bar Association with the goal of expanding opportunities for minority, low-income and disadvantaged students to attend law school. The organization’s first program—a summer institute—was modeled after Emory University’s Pre-Start Program, created in 1966 by former Dean Ben F. Johnson Jr. The Pre-Start Program was developed to test law school readiness as an alternative to the LSAT. Pre-Start guaranteed law school admission to black college graduates who completed the program.

In 1968, Emory, along with the University of Denver, Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles, hosted the first CLEO-sponsored summer institute. Professor Mike Devito, a former Emory Law faculty member and the first director of the Pre-Start program, accepted the award on Emory’s behalf.

CLEO presented an award to Professor Gozansky for his contributions as associate director of the national CLEO program during the 1970s. In addition to his oversight of the summer institutes for three years, Professor Gozansky lead the effort to transfer funding from the Office of Economic Opportunity, which was at risk of being abolished, to the Department of Education, thus securing CLEO’s future. He also is responsible for moving the organization’s headquarters from Atlanta to Washington, D.C.