The David and Nancy Wolf Chair in Ethics and Professional Identity

The David and Nancy Wolf Chair and Program in Ethics and Professional Identity, endowed by alumnus David Wolf and Nancy Wolf, enables Chase to offer and to continually expand education in the areas of ethical conduct and social justice. It supports programming related to ethics and professionalism, including enhancements to pro bono and public interest service by students, training in diversity, equity and inclusion, recruitment of an ethicist-in-residence and development of lectureships in ethics and professional responsibility.

The chair was established in the 2023-24 academic year with the appointment of Professor Jack Harrison. Professor Harrison, who joined the Chase faculty in 2011, enhances the chair by his combined experience as a practicing lawyer, a law professor and a seminarian with a degree in theology. Prior to joining the Chase faculty he practiced for almost 20 years in major Cincinnati law firms. He teaches such courses as Torts, Civil Procedure, Professional Responsibility, and Sexual Orientation and the Law. He also directs the Chase Center for Excellence in Advocacy, which offers students experience primarily in courtroom advocacy.

Inaugural Lecture - Woman in Gold

The newly endowed David and Nancy Wolf Chair in Ethics and Professional Identity at Chase College of Law presented its inaugural lecture on September 27, 2023 on a lawyer’s account of recovering artwork stolen during the Holocaust. The presentation by Los Angeles lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg, followed by his conversation with Chase Professor Jack Harrison, who holds the Wolf Chair, was held at the Cincinnati Museum Center, and is in partnership with the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, located at the museum center.

Mr. Schoenberg is a litigator and grandson of Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg, who fled Nazi persecution prior to World War II, who took on the challenge to recover for a family friend six paintings by Gustav Klimt held by an Austrian state museum that ultimately were valued at more than $325 million. Among them was “Golden Lady,” an early 20th century portrait utilizing application of gold leaf, that gave name to the 2015 movie “Woman in Gold” that recounted Mr. Schoenberg’s decade-long legal quest that began in the late 1990s. At the time, Mr. Schoenberg had been practicing law for about 10 years. Mr. Schoenberg successfully argued to the Supreme Court of the United States that his client, Maria Altman, from whose family the paintings had been stolen in 1938 in Nazi Germany-aligned Austria, could sue Austria for their return. He subsequently prevailed in 2006 in arbitration in Austria that the paintings be returned to Ms. Altman, who had fled Austria following Germany’s unopposed annexation of the country. 

The event was also sponsored by the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Bar Association, Northern Kentucky Bar Association and the Ohio Innocence Project.