Law school receives grant

Michigan State University College of Law has announced that it has received a $15,000 grant from the Michigan Humanities Council.
The grant will support the mid-November production of a play written by Sandra Seaton, MSU Law’s inaugural writer in residence, and a corresponding symposium.
This marks only the second time in the Michigan Humanities Council’s 36-year history that it has awarded a major grant to a law school.
The first such grant went to the Detroit College of Law (now MSU College of Law) in 1978.
Seaton’s play will focus on African American students at a Midwestern university during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
It will be jointly sponsored by the MSU College of Law, James Madison College, and the MSU Department of Theatre.
The Black Law Students Association and other student groups will help facilitate the project.
The follow-up symposium, which will be open to the entire University community, will examine the treatment of moral and legal issues in Seaton’s plays and other dramatic works.
The MSU Law Writer in Residence Program is coordinated by University-wide Professor Nicholas Mercuro, who teaches Law and Economics and manages art-related projects at the Law College.
The residency is an outgrowth of a series of art exhibitions Mercuro has helped acquire for display at MSU Law over the past nine years, all touching on themes involving law and justice.
Mercuro will administer the Michigan Humanities Council grant.
“We are honored to receive this Michigan Humanities Council grant to help support the activities of our first writer in residence,” Mercuro said. “The Council’s financial support will be a great boost in our efforts to present Sandra Seaton’s work as a unique lens through which the MSU Law community can consider legal issues and engage in the arts.”
The Michigan Humanities Council, whose goal is to connect people and communities by fostering and creating quality cultural programs, is the state’s affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.