New Fellows Join the UCLA Emmett Institute

Adrien Abecassis and Beth Kent bring expertise in international diplomacy and environmental justice to UCLA’s environmental law programs. 

Belated introductions are due for two new fellows who joined the UCLA Emmett Institute this summer, Adrien Abecassis and Beth Kent.

Abecassis and Kent join four other Emmett Institute fellows, Charles Corbett, Benjamin Harris, Jesse Reynolds, and Siyi Shen, in limited-term faculty appointments at UCLA Law, conducting research, teaching classes, and supporting our public service.

Adrien Abecassis joins us as an Emmett Climate Engineering Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy for 2020-21

A career French diplomat, Abecassis previously served as an advisor for five years to President of France François Hollande, as a policy officer in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a project manager at Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a European policy think-tank, and as a lecturer in international relations at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). Since 2017, Abecassis has held visiting fellowships at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

During his fellowship, Abecassis will focus on the governance of solar geoengineering, including researching ways to convene policymakers, experts, and other relevant stakeholders to explore and advance questions in international policy and law. Adrien made his first mark as a signatory to a comment letter from several faculty members responding to the governance structure of a proposed solar geoengineering research at Harvard.

Abecassis joins two other fellows, Charles Corbett and Jesse Reynolds, in the Emmett Institute’s project on climate engineering governance led by our faculty co-director Ted Parson.

Beth Kent ‘18 joins us as an Emmett/Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy

Previously, Kent served in a two-year fellowship with Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, an organization committed to addressing park inequities in Los Angeles, with a focus on access to green space for low-income communities of color. Kent’s fellowship was funded in part by the UC President’s Public Interest Fellowship.

Kent has already helped publish the first edition of our Environmental Law Resources and Career Guide, a 60-page document that provides current students a comprehensive set of resources on careers in private, nonprofit, and public sectors, including profiles of 20 UCLA Law alumni working in environmental law. Kent has also helped organize and moderate a panel discussion for students on environmental justice in Los Angeles. And Kent helped organize a UCLA Public Service Challenge volunteer project last week at a community garden in South L.A.

A 2018 J.D. graduate of UCLA Law, Kent served as president of the Environmental Law Society and as an editor for the Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. Kent completed the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and was a summer law clerk at Earthjustice and the California Office of the Attorney General, Land Law Section, and also served as a legal extern at NRDC.

Look for updates on work by Abecassis and Kent here on Legal Planet (see Kent’s recent post on park equity in Los Angeles) and in the Emmett Institute’s regular email updates (subscribe here).