Professor Libby Adler ’94 received the 2023 LGBTQ+ Individual Inclusive Excellence Award from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues (SOGII) at the organization’s 2024 annual meeting in January. This award recognizes innovative contributions to the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the legal academy and the legal profession more broadly. Adler was singled out for her efforts to advance the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in both the legal academy and the legal profession.

“I’m fortunate to be making my career at a law school where support for LGBTQ+ people has always been in the water. It is really a team effort stretching back decades. It’s one of the major reasons I came to Northeastern as a student back in 1991 and returned in 2000 to teach,” said Adler, who draws heavily on queer and critical theory in her research on sexuality, gender, family and children. She is the author of Gay Priori: A Queer Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform (Duke University Press, 2018).

Each year, SOGII names two LGBTQ+ Inclusive Excellence Award recipients, one an individual and one an institution/program. In 2022, Northeastern Law received the institutional award for its “long legacy of inclusion, expanding access and breaking barriers as well as its well-deserved reputation as the premiere training ground for LGBTQ+ law students who enter practice and change the world for LGBTQ+ people.”

I’m fortunate to be making my career at a law school where support for LGBTQ+ people has always been in the water.

— Professor Libby Adler