Tom Allen
Instructor, University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
2023
Tom Allen is a lawyer who practiced for over 40 years with the global law firm Reed Smith LLP until his retirement at the end of 2021. Tom is currently an instructor with the University of Pittsburgh’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, teaching courses about the U.,S. Supreme Court and other legal topics. In the summer of 2023 Tom taught a course about the trial of Robert Bowers, who in August of 2023 was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018. Tom obtained a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1977 and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980.
This cannot be thought of as a conference or a summit. The stakes are simply too high and the data/conversation and methods to drive action more valuable/motivating than any gathering I have attended. I took more than 100 pages of notes and have shared them with my CBS News leadership team, anchors, producers, and correspondents. Nothing about this gathering was easy. The agony around this topic is real. But no one curious about it could ask for a more devoted, rational, or unflinching look into this dark but decipherable world.
