Since early 2025, our country has lost hundreds of thousands of federal career public servants through reductions in force, terminations, retirements and resignations. As Northeastern Law’s 2025-2026 Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration Visiting Fellow, I had the honor to get to know nine extraordinary people who had recently concluded their federal government service. They joined the Northeastern community as Law and Policy Fellows. Together, their experience represents more than 150 collective years of federal service across 15 agencies and offices.

As government employees, these fellows had:

• ensured our financial markets were safe for small-time investors;
• reached out to populations historically overlooked by our patent office so that more types of Americans could contribute to our economic engine of innovation;
• funneled life-saving aid and community economic development supports that won America goodwill around the world;
• enforced our labor laws so regular people benefitted from their guarantees – taking on employers and affording workers safety, dignity and fair pay;
• monitored and helped us navigate strategic threats around the world and at home;
• leveraged U.S. leadership at the United Nations to pressure repressive governments, improve conditions for women, and promote human rights;
• led a government-wide program to protect and advance civil rights;
• coordinated the federal government’s efforts to improve, preserve and protect America’s public health and environment;
• defended the public’s financial resources and made sure it was a model litigant in court;
• and helped judges reach just and efficient results as both litigants and clerks.

For more than a quarter century, the fellows served every administration, taking on these honorable and not particularly ideological tasks. And each administration (including the first term under this president) understood this work to be in the United States’ interest. As Americans and taxpayers, all of us were their ultimate employers, bosses and beneficiaries. Getting to know more about the fellows’ work, I am left with the firm conviction that America was safer, more prosperous, and more in control of its own destiny because of their service.

Becoming acquainted with these fellows has sharpened the sense of loss and worry I feel as a citizen for the country I am passing on to my children. In this year as fellows, they have applied their same values of service to this opportunity – contributing to Northeastern’s learning environment and preparing the next generation of mission-driven professionals, while also preparing to take their own next steps.

I had the privilege to attend the fellows’ panels and meet-and-greets with Northeastern community members. Students from multiple disciplines asked the fellows insightful and searching questions – finding not only wise answers but also their own voices. Each fellow had their own “why” for their public service, including improving lives, creating equal opportunity, increasing transparency and providing decisionmakers with the very best information from trustworthy and reliable experts. Students’ heads nodded in the audience, their pens scribbled take-aways and to dos, their faces lit up with “ah ha” moments. There was more humor than I expected. I palpably felt students leave those rooms with more clarity, hope and confidence than they came in with.

There are nonprofits, media organizations and doubtless academic institutions taking up the challenge of documenting the impact of the mass government departures. That work is admirable, necessary and ongoing. But it speaks to Northeastern’s unique strengths that it took the proactive step, not only to note with concern what is happening, but to design and create this program that benefitted all involved. I’ve found it easier to comprehend the massive changes to the federal government by hearing directly from individuals who have been personally impacted, for instance a civil servant who felt she had to resign rather than violate the law, a wronged worker the DOJ spoke up for but then abandoned.

Notwithstanding both longstanding and currently acute critiques of government, the portrait the Law and Policy Fellows paint of federal service is much more meaningful, compelling and nuanced. They reflect on their time in government as a privilege. They have deep respect for their colleagues’ expertise and dedication. They appreciated the opportunity and responsibility to improve large systems that impact millions of Americans’ daily lives. They diligently ensured continuity of key services and governmental functions across changes in administration, disasters and rapid societal shifts. I expect future reports and studies will inevitably leave out one of the things I’ve been most struck by meeting these nine longtime civil servants. What united them was something beyond their shared employer; it was their clear sense of duty to carry out the government’s responsibilities with integrity.

So, what’s next? Now that the fellows have concluded their time at Northeastern, we know we’ll keep in touch and wear our Northeastern pride as alums of this remarkable program. Some of the fellows have already landed their next permanent roles: working in a law school clinic, establishing a new consulting practice, joining a mission-driven firm and launching a new non-profit. Others have assembled meaningful temporary roles as adjunct faculty, in university administration and as a policy fellow, and will take on additional new opportunities going forward. Our next chapter is not yet written, but we’ll continue writing it together.

July 2026