On February 6, 2025, the Law School recognized two esteemed alumni, Elizabeth Glazer ’86 and David J. Greenwald ’83, in the Ballroom of Cipriani 42nd Street.
Elizabeth Glazer ’86
Founder of Vital City
Elizabeth Glazer is a criminal justice expert and the founder of Vital City, a policy venture and magazine dedicated to finding practical, evidence-based solutions to urban problems.
Glazer brings to these projects her lifetime of public service dedicated to making New York safer and fairer. Most recently, she served as the director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, where she was the architect of a strategy to reduce the jail population while maintaining public safety.
During her tenure, the number of people held in jail fell by more than half while the city experienced the lowest crime levels in decades. Previously, she was deputy secretary for public safety for the state of New York, where she oversaw eight state agencies, including Corrections, State Police, and the National Guard, with a budget of $9 billion and 40,000 employees.
As a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York from 1987 to 2000, she served successively as the chief of the Organized Crime, Violent Gangs, and Crime Control Strategies units and helped pioneer the use of racketeering laws to address gang violence. A frequent commentator on criminal justice issues, Glazer has written about her work in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
Glazer’s connection to Columbia runs deep: She grew up a few blocks from the Morningside campus, where her father and stepfather both taught. Glazer is a member of the Dean’s Council, and for many years taught a class at the Law School on gang prosecutions.
As a Columbia Law student, she was an editor of the Columbia Law Review. She clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 when she served on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
David J. Greenwald ’83
Chairman Emeritus and Of Counsel at Fried,
Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson
Co-Chair of the Trustees of Columbia University
David J. Greenwald has been an admired leader in law, business, and the nonprofit world throughout his distinguished career. As chairman of Fried Frank for 10 years, until his retirement in 2024, Greenwald advised clients on their most complex and challenging matters. Through his leadership, the firm’s revenue, profitability, and head count grew substantially. Greenwald has been quoted about the firm’s strategy and financial performance in numerous publications, including The American Lawyer, Bloomberg Big Law Business, Forbes, The Lawyer, Leaders Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
Greenwald began his career at Fried Frank in 1983 and served as a corporate partner from 1990 to 1994, principally representing private equity clients and clients engaged in mergers and acquisitions. In 1994, he joined the legal department of Goldman Sachs and was named managing director in 1998 and partner in 2000, later serving as international general counsel and a deputy general counsel before returning to Fried Frank in 2013.
Greenwald has brought his legal and business acumen to a wide range of organizations, including as co-chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University. He serves on the Dean’s Council of Columbia Law School and the boards of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, The Legal Aid Society (chair, finance committee), Lenox Hill Neighborhood House (chair, audit committee), and Lincoln Center Theater (chair, audit committee). He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also served as deputy chair of the Financial Markets Law Committee in the United Kingdom and co-chair of the Practising Law Institute (PLI) Annual Institute on Securities Regulation in Europe, and chair of the Wharton Alumni Executive Board. (He is a summa cum laude graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.) In recognition of his leadership and service to the legal and broader communities, Greenwald was awarded the Judge Learned Hand Award by the American Jewish Committee in 2017.
On February 23, 2024, the Law School recognized two esteemed alumni, Rolando T. Acosta CC ’79, LAW ’82 and Alia Tutor ’00, in the Ballroom of Cipriani 42nd Street.
Rolando T. Acosta CC ’79, LAW ’82
Partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
and Retired Presiding Justice of the New York State Supreme Court,
Appellate Division, First Department
Rolando T. Acosta served for a quarter century as an innovative and community-minded New York trial and appellate judge, presiding over hundreds of bench and jury trials and thousands of appeals in civil and criminal cases. Most notably, he served on the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department for 15 years, including for six years as presiding justice. He retired from the bench in March 2023.
Acosta is currently a trustee emeritus of Columbia University, which awarded him its Medal for Excellence in 2000. He is a member of the Law School’s Dean’s Council and, in 2013, received the Wien Prize for Social Responsibility. As an undergraduate, he starred as a right-handed pitcher for the baseball team and led the Lions to two Ivy League championships. He still holds university records for most career and season wins, starts, and innings pitched, and he was inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.
Acosta’s judicial career began when he was elected to New York County Civil Court in 1997 and to the New York State Supreme Court in New York County in 2002. He was the first Dominican to hold that position and spearheaded the creation of the Harlem Community Justice Center, a multijurisdictional community court program. Acosta has received numerous honors, including the Latino Judges Association John Carro Award for Judicial Excellence, the National Hispanic Bar Association 2004 Judge of the Year, and the Jewish Lawyers Guild’s Golda Meir Memorial Award in 2013.
Born in the Dominican Republic, Acosta grew up in the South Bronx and Washington Heights after immigrating to New York City with his family at age 14. Throughout his career, beginning as a public interest lawyer with The Legal Aid Society and a deputy commissioner for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, Acosta served as a civic leader in Washington Heights. He is the husband of Vasthi Reyes Acosta TC ’94, TC ’95 and father of Lucas Acosta and Zila Acosta-Grimes CC ’11, LAW ’15.
Watch Rolando T. Acosta ’82 receive the Medal for Excellence.
Alia Tutor ’00
President of the Alia Tutor Family Foundation
Alia Tutor’s philanthropy is driven by projects where she can make a significant impact, particularly in medicine, higher education, and economic empowerment for underserved communities. She has devoted her giving and board service to a wide range of organizations.
In 2022, Tutor, through the Alia Tutor Family Foundation, made a transformational $17.5 million gift to Columbia Law School—the largest single commitment in the Law School’s history—for the reimagined and renamed Alia Tutor Law Library, which is due to open in 2025. This was Tutor’s second significant gift to the Law School. In 2020, to celebrate her 20th reunion, she endowed the Sidney J. Feltenstein 1926 Scholarship Fund in honor of her grandfather who was also a Columbia Law graduate. An engaged alumna whose ties to the Law School extend back to her great-grandfather Moses who graduated in 1887, Tutor also serves on the Law School’s Dean’s Council.
Tutor is a proud member of the Board of Directors for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and the CHLA Foundation Board of Trustees. She endowed CHLA’s Global Online Pediatric Subspecialty Training Program, a comprehensive telehealth and tele-education platform that facilitates advanced subspecialty pediatric training to bolster the skills of doctors and nurses on the frontlines of providing care in other countries. She also served as co-chair of the hospital’s Government Relations Committee.
Tutor is married to Ronald N. Tutor. Together, they are longtime supporters of the University of Southern California (USC), where Tutor established the Alia Tutor Chair in Reproductive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC to foster groundbreaking research and treatment critical to this field of medicine. She serves on the President’s Leadership Council at USC and is an inaugural member of the Keck Medicine of USC Board of Councilors. A passionate supporter of the arts, Tutor serves on the board of directors of the Aspen Music Festival and School. She is also a former member of the Los Angeles Ballet (LAB) Board of Directors and was recently honored with LAB’s Angel Award for “extraordinary contributions … to LAB and the city of Los Angeles.
Watch Alia Tutor ’00 receive the Medal for Excellence.
1964 Hon. Joseph M. Proskauer, 1899
1965 Hon. Harold R. Medina 1912
1966 Hon. Thomas E. Dewey 1925
1967 Hon. Stanley H. Fuld 1926
1968 Whitney North Seymour 1923
1969 Dean William C. Warren
1970 Hon. Frank S. Hogan 1928
1971 Professor Walter Gellhorn ’31
1971 Professor Herbert Wechsler ’31
1972 Hon. Stanley Reed 1909
1973 Hon. William O. Douglas 1925
1973 Hon. Simon H. Rifkind 1925
1974 Hon. Clifford P. Case 1928
1974 Hon. William T. Gossett 1928
1975 Hon. Charles D. Breitel ’32
1976 Professor Milton Handler 1926
1976 Professor Richard R.B. Powell 1914
1977 Hon. Philip C. Jessup 1924
1978 Hon. Paul R. Hays ’33
1978 Hon. Leonard P. Moore 1922
1979 Hon. Harold Leventhal ’36
1979 Hon. Carl McGowan ’36
1980 Harriet F. Pilpel ’36
1981 Hon. Lawrence E. Walsh ’35
1982 Professor Louis Henkin
1983 Wilbur H. Friedman ’30
1984 Hon. Oscar H. Davis ’37
1984 Justin A. Stanley ’37
1985 Professor Willis L.M. Reese
1986 Hon. James D. Hopkins ’33
1986 Hon. Benjamin Kaplan ’33
1987 Hon. Marvin E. Frankel ’48
1987 Hon. Constance Baker Motley ’46
1988 Edith I. Spivack ’32
1988 Morton Stavis ’36
1989 Professor Harry W. Jones ’39
1989 Professor Albert J. Rosenthal
1990 Hon. Wilfred Feinberg ’43
1990 Hon. Jack B. Weinstein ’48
1991 Hon. Frank C. Newman ’47 LL.M., ’53 J.S.D.
1991 Professor Oscar Schachter ’39
1992 Hon. Vilma S. Martinez ’67
1993 Hon. Hong-Choo Hyun ’69
1993 Hon. Eugene Nickerson ’43
1994 Hon. Giles Sutherland Rich '29
1994 Professor Maurice Rosenberg ’47
1995 Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59
1996 Hon. Kathryn Austin McDonald ’63
1996 Professor Arthur W. Murphy ’48
1997 Hon. Marie L. Garibaldi ’59
1997 Professor Michael I. Sovern ’55
1998 Sidney J. Sheinberg ’58
1998 Mary Jo White ’74
1999 Professor Jack Greenberg ’48
1999 Professor Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. ’54
2000 Professor John M. Kernochan ’48
2000 Hon. Felice K. Shea ’50
2001 Hon. Dickinson R. Debevoise ’51
2001 Harvey R. Miller ’59
2001 Ken Tsunematsu ’63
2002 President Emeritus Lee C. Bollinger Jr. ’71
2003 Susan B. Lindenauer ’64
2003 Judith R. Thoyer ’65
2003 Judith P. Vladeck ’47
2004 Professor E. Allan Farnsworth ’52
2004 Stanley L. Temko ’43
2005 Professor Louis Lowenstein ’53
2005 Michael D. Ratner ’69
2006 Wei Sun Christianson ’89
2006 Professor R. Randle Edwards
2007 Michael E. Patterson ’67
2007 Esta Eiger Stecher ’82
2008 H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest ’58
2009 Steven Epstein ’68
2009 Jerome L. Greene ’28
2010 Hon. Eric H. Holder, Jr. ’76
2010 Professor Henry Paul Monaghan
2011 Max W. Berger ’71
2011 Stephen H. Case ’68
2012 Hon. Jeh Charles Johnson ’82
2012 Richard Paul Richman ’72 J.D., ’73 M.B.A.
2013 Morton L. Janklow ’53
2013 Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. ’83
2014 Ira M. Millstein ’49
2014 Edgar G. Rios ’77
2015 Hon. Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum ’53
2015 Roberta A. Kaplan ’91
2016 Hon. Antony J. Blinken '88
2016 Alison S. Ressler '83
2017 Hon. Anita Blumstein Brody ’58
2017 David J. Stern ’66
2018 Stephen Friedman ’62
2018 Hon. Gerard E. Lynch ’75
2019 Jonathan D. Schiller ’73
2019 Nina L. Shaw ’79
2020 Jim Millstein '82
2020 Franklin A. Thomas ’63
2022 Ellen V. Futter ’74
2022 Brad Smith ’84
2024 Rolando T. Acosta ’82
2024 Alia Tutor ’00