Course Team | HLS2X

faculty

Charles Fried

Charles Fried is the Beneficial Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has been teaching since 1961. Most recently, Fried has taught Contracts and Constitutional Law. He was also the Solicitor General of the United States from 1985 to 1989, where he argued 25 cases in front of the Supreme Court. Fried was also an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts from 1995 to 1999. Fried has authored many books, including Anatomy of Values, Right and Wrong, Modern Liberty, Contract as Promise, Making Tort Law, and Saying Where the Law Is: The Constitution in the Supreme Court, in addition to more than 30 journal articles.

project team

	jascha smilack Project Lead for ContractsX. Jascha has a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard. He taught Chinese literature from all periods at Tufts University from 2011 to 2013, and courses in East Asian Comparative Literature at Boston University in 2015. During his graduate years at Harvard, he spent six years as a Presidential Instructional Technology Fellow and five as Assistant Director of East Asian Studies. Joining HarvardX in 2013, Jascha is also Project lead for JusticeX, Visualizing Japan (finalist for the 2015 Japan Prize for production in educational media), the First Nights series, and American Poetry. For ContractsX, Jascha served as the project lead, managing all aspects of development, including directing and producing all video, leading on instructional design, course development, administration, intellectual property, and course delivery.
	Lindsay Church Lindsay Church is a second-year student at Harvard Law School. She graduated from the University of South Carolina Honors College with a degree in Journalism and Communications. Lindsay spent the past summer with the Media Legal Defence Initiative in London. After taking Professor Fried’s Contracts course as a first-year law student, Lindsay helped develop ContractsX assessments and course documents over the summer and will be serving as a Teaching Fellow for the course.
	samantha sheehan Samantha Sheehan is a Teaching Fellow for ContractsX. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from UC Santa Barbara and is a second year student at Harvard Law School. As part of the core curriculum during her first year, Samantha took part in Professor Charles Fried’s live Contracts course. She spent the past summer interning at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, in the Civil Division, where she worked on affirmative and defensive civil actions and investigations. As a Teaching Fellow, Samantha will help to manage the discussion forums and aid students as they progress through ContractsX.
	patrick swiber Patrick Swiber is a Teaching Fellow for ContractsX and a second-year student at Harvard Law School. Originally from southern Louisiana, he attended Georgetown University, where he earned an A.B. in Government. At HLS, Patrick was a student in Professor Fried’s first-year Contracts class and helped in designing and authoring many assessments and course documents for the ContractsX course.
	carol szurkowski Carol Szurkowski is a Teaching Fellow for ContractsX. She holds a B.A. in Classical Languages and Literatures from Dartmouth College, and is a recent graduate of Harvard Law School. In 2012, Carol was a student in Professor Fried’s Contracts course for first year law students. As the first Teaching Fellow in ContractsX, Carol has authored assessments and provided feedback and image research for video and course documents.
	ryann tagle Ryann Tagle is the video editor for Contracts, and has been a part of the HarvardX media team for just over a year. He recently graduated from Emerson College, where he studied Visual and Media Arts and was able to gain experience working in various roles from on-set production to post-production. While Ryann is devoted to editing, he is interested in the application of video in education and enjoys learning about the courses he edits. He also left a couple easter eggs in the animations for everyone, will you find them?
	Shilpa Idnani Shilpa Idnani is a Course Development Assistant for ContractsX, and has been a part of HarvardX for just about a year. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Wellesley College, where she specialized in creating interactive computer ecosystem and hydrogeological models. Recently, she has designed, created, and collected materials for wide variety of HarvardX courses including Innovating in Healthcare, Data Analytics for Human Genomics, and ContractsX. She will be monitoring the discussion boards for technical issues with the platform and course.
	Cindy YanG Cindy is a Masters student in the Technology, Innovation, and Education program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She works at HarvardX part time as an Instructional Development Assistant.