Ireen Ha

Ireen is a third-year law student, abolitionist, and aspiring public defender. She decided to attend law school after playing a critical role in the legal defense of a family member who, at the time, was facing the possibility of incarceration. Realizing that the law’s ability to forgive is reserved almost exclusively for the most privileged and wealthy among us, Ireen left behind a career in the hospitality industry to fight for a criminal legal system imbued with greater compassion and humanity.

Ireen is from Queens, New York, where she and her neighbors, during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, marched daily to demand that then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council make dramatic cuts to the NYPD’s $11 billion budget. At Harvard Law School, Ireen serves as an Executive Managing Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and as a student attorney with the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project, through which she is currently representing an incarcerated client in her upcoming parole hearing.