ADL Board Member Karen Steinhauser talks about how growing up with the Anti-Defamation League has impacted her life’s work teaching and standing up for the rights of others.
How did you first become involved in ADL? How are you involved now?
My Father was regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Region for 28 years. We grew up with ADL and the ADL family was always part of my extended family. When I was about 12 years old or so, every summer Dad would bring me to the office to work stuffing envelopes, putting stamps on letters, etc. When I finished law school in 1981 I joined the young leadership program and have stayed involved ever since then, co-chairing the Development Committee, Civil Rights Committee, Government Affairs Committee, Law Enforcement Committee and eventually chairing the Board of Directors. Many of the people I was on the board with were people I had addressed envelopes to as a young child.
What do you do in your professional life?
I am an attorney with my own solo practice specializing in criminal defense for juveniles and adults. I also am an adjunct law professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. I teach evidence and trial practice. I have been teaching there for 25 years.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an actress for a long time, but I knew whatever I did, I wanted to help people.
Where were you born? From where do your ancestors hail?
I was born in Columbus, Ohio. My grandparents were from Austria.
What’s your favorite holiday?
Thanksgiving and Passover – they are about being with family and eating!!
What’s your favorite food? Dark chocolate
What are you reading?
I’m reading an amazing book called Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson is an attorney, a law professor and the executive director of an organization called the Equal Justice Initiative. He’s also the descendant of slaves. He went on to attend Harvard Law and after graduation, began representing poor clients in the South. The book is about the work Stevenson has done with young people who are on death row, and about dealing with poverty and injustice in our criminal justice system.
What’s a special place you have visited?
The Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church where four young girls were killed when a bomb went off on September 15, 1963. The whole museum is dedicated to the history of the civil rights era in Alabama and to Birmingham’s role in the civil rights movement. It’s an amazing place.
What’s one thing every person should know or experience?
Being able to make a difference in someone’s life.
What teacher or class stands out to you the most in your education and why?
I had two teachers who stand out, one in high school and one in college. Peter Blanco, who taught sociology at Arapahoe High School, and Dennis Eckhart, with whom I studied urban policy analysis at the University of Colorado in Boulder, are true inspirations. They stand out because they took the time to not just educate me, but to mentor me and became a role model for when I first started teaching law school 25 years ago.
What are you passionate about personally? What can’t you stop talking about?
My son, Daniel, who is a junior in college, my friends and family and my wonderful past and present law students.
Where can we find you when you’re not working?
On the tennis court or having coffee with friends.
What would be impossible for you to give up?
Teaching. I try to instill in my students the notions of competency, professionalism and justice.
Tell me a story that immediately pops into your mind that was a defining or significant moment for you.
When I was in high school my teachers went on strike. I supported them by writing letters to the editor and by picketing with them. I received many letters back, both supportive and non-supportive. But I also received horrible anti-Semitic hate mail for no other reason other than that my name “sounded” Jewish. That was my first personal experience with anti-Semitism.
Why do you choose to make a financial investment in ADL?
ADL embodies all of the values that I hold so dear: the concept of tikkun olam – repairing the world, fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry, and standing up for the human rights and dignity of every human being.
Complete this sentence: For me, the ADL is …
Another extension of my family and an organization I am so incredibly proud to have been a part of for most of my life.