Podcast: Professor Mike Wishnie Finds Delight When Students Take On Tough Cases
On this episode of “Inside Yale Law School,” Professor Michael Wishnie sits down with Dean Heather K. Gerken to delve into what Gerken calls “cases of a lifetime” handled by his clinics. Wishnie and his students have sued the Department of Veterans Affairs to win Black veterans the benefits they earned, and took on the Trump administration’s family separation policy at the southern border. Wishnie also recalls his time teaching in China during the Tiananmen Square uprisings.
Mike Wishnie ’93 is the William O. Douglas Professor of Law. He teaches the Veterans Legal Services Clinic (VLSC) and the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC). His teaching, scholarship, and law practice have focused on immigration, labor and employment, habeas corpus, civil rights, government transparency, veterans law, and voting rights.
Fighting to end racial discrimination in veterans’ benefits (1:48)
In 2022, the VLSC filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of Conley Monk Jr., a Vietnam veteran from New Haven, challenging long-standing racial disparities in VA benefits. Wishnie explains the case:
“For generations, the VA has been denying the applications for veterans’ benefits from Black veterans at a far higher rate than it has done for white veterans. The consequences have been catastrophic. World War II veterans, like Mr. Monk's father, who came home from service and sought housing assistance to buy their first home, education benefits to go to college and earn a degree, were turned down far more often than white veterans, and the consequences through the years are almost incalculable.”
Read more:
Family separation at the border (31:21)
In 2018, the WIRAC clinic jumped into action when the Trump administration began separating families at the southern border to deter asylum seekers. The clinic represented two young children who were taken from their parents in Texas and brought to Connecticut. Wishnie describes how the clinic took a different legal approach to reunite the families:
“We filed emergency habeas petitions for the children in federal court here in Connecticut, and while there was already a lot of litigation, as I said, underway, it was all for parents. These were the first cases in the country brought to add the unique voices of the children… There are some distinctive legal claims available to children not available to parents.”
Read more:
WIRAC Family Separation Lawsuit Settles in Court
Home is Here (Yale Law Report feature story on WIRAC)
How students in China inspired his career (41:35)
After college, Wishnie spent two years teaching English in Wuhan, China, and watched as his students risked their lives to participate in pro-democracy protests in 1989 like their counterparts in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He describes the impact on his career:
“I was so inspired by my students. They risked everything to make their country a little more decent, a little more fair, a little more democratic. And of course, my own country has deep problems of race and class and so many other things … It made me kind of committed in a lifetime to making our country just a little bit better for all of us.”
