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Dean Robert Leckey receives CBA Hero Award

Dean Robert Leckey
Published: 17 July 2024

We are delighted to announce that the Sexual and Gender Diversity Alliance Section (SAGDA) of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) recognized Dean Robert Leckey, Ad E, with its Hero Award on 16 July 2024.

This prestigious award recognizes excellence within the Canadian legal profession in advancing the cause of equality for LGBTQ2+ people.

Robert Leckey is a renowned expert in constitutional law and family law whose publications have addressed same-sex marriage, recognition of a variety of parenting arrangements, and the links between family law and the criminalization of homosexual conduct. As a professor, he consistently brings a sensitivity to LGBTQ2+ communities into his teaching. His numerous media interventions earned him the inaugural McGill Principal’s Changemaker prize for his public engagement through media in 2020.

Beyond the classroom, Dean Leckey has chaired McGill’s Equity Subcommittee on Queer People and he co-chairs McGill’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee. As dean, he has worked to sustain an open and welcoming environment for LGBTQ2+ students, staff, and faculty. He has championed important philanthropic initiatives to anchor support for LGBTQ2+ scholarship at the Faculty of Law, leading to the endowment of the Michelle Douglas Lecture, the Martine Roy Student Colloquium, the Everett Klippert Scholarship, and LGBT Purge Fund scholarships.

A member of Egale Canada’s Legal Issues Committee since 2004, he served as its chair from 2011 to 2016, the period during which he was president of Egale Canada’s board of directors.

Dean Leckey has been a role model and mentor to generations of emerging jurists and legal scholars from LGBTQ2+ communities. He has tapped and encouraged jurists behind him to step up and assume leadership roles, at Egale Canada and at McGill. Numerous former students and colleagues lauded the exceptional guidance and support he generously offered as they launched their careers. “Dean Leckey has shaped his mentees’ lives in profound ways, helping us to build community and solidarity together and encouraging us to grow as independent, free-thinking, and public intellectual scholars of gender and sexuality,” a former post-doctoral fellow wrote.

“[Dean Leckey] has been a voice for transformation and courageous leadership at McGill and in Canada,” wrote former student and mentee Dr. Tanya De Mello, BCL/LLB’11, Vice-President, Equity and Community Inclusion at Toronto Metropolitan University. “He seeks to address systemic barriers and, in the last decade, I have seen [him] go beyond the big picture issues and examine the nuances and intersections of identity. He is someone that has committed to doing the deeper work,” she concluded.

At the same ceremony, SAGDA and the CBA also conferred a Hero Award on Bennett Jensen, BCL/JD’11. Please join us in congratulating Dean Leckey, and our alumnus Bennett, on this remarkable recognition!

 
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