Washington Lawyer - May/June 2024 - 36

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
STEPHEN PERSHING
By Sarah Kellogg
Follows the
Sound of Justice
Barkai Pershing, moved the family to New York
City where she became a music professor at
Queens College. He immersed himself in music,
learning piano, of course, but also devoting
himself to classical violin. He plays today with
the Capital City Symphony, and he and his cellist
wife, Emily Toll, often have chamber music
sessions at their home.
" Music is so dear to me, " says Pershing, who
learned to play the viola at 60. " Music and law
are not as crazy different from one another as it
might seem, even though one is intensely verbal,
and the other is hardly verbal at all. "
" I think my love for music goes deeper than my
love of justice, and that is saying a whole lot.
They both move me to tears, " he adds.
After graduating from Harvard University as an
English major, Pershing worked at public radio
stations around the country for five years, eventually
becoming an accomplished music producer
for classical music stations in Seattle;
Amherst, Massachusetts; and Norfolk, Virginia.
S
tephen " Steve " Pershing's life
is marked - and even guided
- by the formidable echoes
of his childhood and the
deeply felt values of his musician
mother and civil engineer father.
As a child, he saw the campaign for civil rights
take an ugly turn in Alabama under Governor
George Wallace, and he watched his father,
who was steering important urban renewal
projects for the Huntsville Housing Authority,
succumb to terminal cancer at the age of 32.
The past has inspired Pershing, who is currently
of counsel at Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch,
36 WASHINGTON LAWYER
* MAY/JUNE 2024
P.C., to devote much of his life and career to
advocating on behalf of the marginalized and
eradicating injustice in U.S. institutions, particularly
in the processes that govern voting, employment,
and housing.
" My mother told me that when I was six or seven
years old, somebody asked me what my father
did for a living and I told them, 'He builds
houses for poor people,' " says Pershing. " Without
really knowing a whole lot about anything,
that was my answer. This is proof to me of how
early I internalized their values. "
MELDING MUSIC & LAW
It would be several years, however, before Pershing
pursued his passion for justice. A year
after his father died, his pianist mother, Drora
Despite his success inside the radio booth,
he felt something was missing in those dark,
insulated rooms. His self-reflection eventually
brought him to the University of Virginia School
of Law. He remembers now how writing his
two-page essay for law school admission gave
him a chance to assess the early meaning of
his life.
" What I wrote in the essay was that my life had
basically consisted of preserving or increasing
the store of beauty in the world, and I was now
looking at choosing between doing that and
working for peace and justice in my corner
of the planet, " says Pershing. " Faced with that
choice, I would be ashamed if I had cast my
vote for beauty only. "
A serious student, Pershing says he enjoyed
the lively conversations and demands of law
school. Shortly after graduation, he put his education
to use against his alma mater, successfully
suing UVA under the First Amendment on
behalf of students protesting apartheid.
Courtesy of Stephen Pershing
Washington Lawyer - May/June 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Lawyer - May/June 2024
