Ed Baum speaking at a lectern

Ed Baum Alpern Award Speech 2023

It is a great and unique responsibility to be the first to have to accept an honor named for a giant among ILRies, Jerry Alpern, without having him here with us to be thanked, in person, for all he did for ILR and to inspire so many of us

  • As I told Sue, Jerry Alpern was such a force that I remember when I first met him more than 40 years ago, right outside Ives, when Sue and I were class of ’81 undergrads and her parents were visiting on campus
  • Jerry charmed me – and then inspired me in the decades since to try to live up to his example of service to our remarkable school
  • great honor and I feel the weight my shoulders
  • special thank you to Dean Dean for warning me: as befits its namesake, this award is very weighty

This particular room in the Pierre has always been very special, even magical for me, ever since the first time I set foot in it

  • the first time here – in a tux, with my bride Holly at my side, on the greatest night of my life and, I submit, in the history of the world
  • no, was not our wedding;
  • it was the night that, as a junior associate attending his first law firm prom, I nearly lost my dinner on the partner’s wife sitting next to me, and if I had my career might have ended right then and there
  • the cause of that distress was a waiter, who stepped up to the mic on this very stage and uttered some of the most devastating words I had ever heard: Boston Red Sox 3, New York Mets zero
  • but as I said, this is a magical room
  • and by the end of that night, October 27, 1986, the score was Mets 8, Red Sox 5, and the Mets were World Champions
  • and here I am again in this same room and obviously, its magic is back.

But seriously, nearly everything that led to my being in this room that night, as a young associate at a great law firm, and to being here tonight, and nearly every major step forward in my career and for members of our family, are traceable directly to Cornell and, more specifically, to ILR

In fact, you can draw a straight line from my very first encounter with ILR – as a high school senior – to my being here tonight.

  • in those days, ILR called in groups of applicants for live interviews at the ILR offices (on 43rd).
  • and when I walked in for my interview, I saw a room filled with 20 or so anxious high school seniors, and just one parent - a father who would not, to his daughter’s visible embarrassment, leave her alone with that dangerous crowd
  • so being the typical shy future ILRie, I stepped in and persuaded the doting dad to leave
  • and my smug act that day as a 17 year old was the root cause of my being here tonight
  • and not for the obvious reason – that I obviously sweet talked the staff into admitting me to ILR
  • but because the daughter of the father I ushered out of the room that day became class of ’81 alumna Dolores Gebhardt
  • And in what I assume was a misguided expression of gratitude for sparing her further embarrassment more than 45 years ago, Dolores was the primary instigator of my nomination for this Alpern award
  • As I have often said – and there is a published court opinion in New Jersey that quotes me for arguing this on behalf of a client – “no good deed goes unpunished”

Now that was back when I was 17.  In the precocious manner of ILRies, my first serious career step was not made until I was 20 when, thanks to ILR, I began work as a Field Examiner for the NLRB

  • and that led to a lifelong passion for serving as a dispute resolution professional
  • mediated and settled my first disputes there, at the age of 20, thanks to what I was learning at ILR
  • digress for ILR trivia: ’81 classmate and prior Alpern award honoree Tracy Dolgin and I shared an office at the NLRB that year

In the years that followed, I was able to get through law school thanks to help from ILR alumni, whose connections helped me secure well-paying part-time jobs at two excellent law firms, while in in school, and, without those jobs, I could not have attended law school.

  • in that era of lean financial aid, those jobs made it possible to pay for such frivolities as tuition, rent and food

And after law school, again directly attributable to ILR, I was privileged to enjoy the incomparable experience of clerking for a distinguished federal district judge, Hon. I. Leo Glasser, who became a great mentor and lifelong friend

  • for when I interviewed with Judge Glasser for the clerkship, he showed me a pile of about 500 resumes that he said were all from extremely well-qualified clerkship candidates.  But Judge Glasser told me that what made him pick my resume out from that huge pile was ILR -- because his wife, the now late Grace Gribetz Glasser, was one of the first women to graduate from ILR.
  • Judge Glasser, BTW, turned 99 this month.  He called me earlier this week – from his chambers and before going on the bench ­­for a sentencing -- to offer congratulations on this award. 99 years young and going strong – I’m just saying, it must be that something about ILRies that keeps our spouses forever young!

So let’s see, I now have taken you all up to roughly age 26 in my bio

I could continue on to explain how ILR made possible so many more of the opportunities I have enjoyed in nearly 4 decades since then, during which I have been privileged to practice with some of the greatest law firm partners, colleagues and friends anyone could wish for

Many of whom are here tonight and I hope you all can meet

  • one is yet another Groat/Alpern honoree from the class of ’81 - my former law firm partner Paul Salvatore; that now makes three from the class of ‘81
  • and then let me jump all the way to my newest colleague, a Cornellian, of course -- Perkins Coie associate Marya Carter from the Cornell law class of ‘22

But any more about me certainly would put everyone to sleep.

  • so let me instead turn to the common ILR threads that tie it all together
  • as my colleagues know, the two things I most love to do, as a litigator and neutral, is to try cases and negotiate deals
  • for the former, the start of it all was with Prof. James Gross, who, in his Labor Law class introduced me to the law and how this whole darn thing works, and who gave me my first taste of trial practice in his Arbitration class
  • and as for negotiation and bargaining, it was Prof. David Lipsky, in the multiple courses I took with him on collective bargaining and negotiation, and his support in years since
  • we are all diminished by the loss of our great friend just a few months ago, but forever enriched by having learned from and with him

But rather than dwell on me, I would prefer leave you with a message of what Cornell and ILR have done for our whole extended family,

-and what we all can do, and bear responsibility for doing, to share that privilege with others

  • when my brother, sister and I were contemplating college in the 1970s, the financial strains of that era of double-digit inflation -- remember that? -- left us each with only two choices, as our parents reminded us:  (1) attend one of the SUNY colleges; or (2) if we could get in, attend one of the state supported colleges at Cornell -- ILR, CALS or Hum Ec. 
  • for in those days, support from NY state covered a full half of tuition for in-state residents
  • and so with those constraints, and in keeping with Ezra Cornell’s vision, we three siblings each found our own places at Cornell -- brother Howard in CALS (or Ag), sister Ellen in Hum Ec, and I, of course, went to ILR
  • Howard’s wife Ellen – and yes, we have two Ellens in the family -- came from even more limited means, and was fortunate to secure full financial aid to attend Arts & Sciences
  • but for the financial support that all four Baums from our generation received -- from the state or from financial aid – none of us could have attended Cornell
  • but today, of course, the state no longer provides the level of support that we enjoyed, and needed, in the ‘70s and early ‘80s
  • fortunately for the next Baum generation, the paths that Cornell set us upon enabled us to get our own kids through excellent colleges without outside help, including two Cornell alumni, our nephew Eric and, of course most heartwarming of all, our daughter Claire in the ILR class of ’16.
  • but we can and must find ways to share those experiences with all talented and motivated students, of whatever means and family backgrounds -- and especially those who would be first in their families to attend college

As some of you know, when I am not practicing law or singing ILRs virtues, I also am privileged to serve in leadership globally in the Jewish Recon movement and in our local synagogue, WES.

  • in the “religion business” we have a saying, loosely paraphrased, that people who become members of the community by choice, as opposed to being born into it, often become the most active and dedicated members

So it is with my wife, Holly Wallace.

Holly’s only connection to Cornell – or so we thought until recently -- was having married into a Cornell family, and having mothered a future alumna  

  • But in the true spirit of someone who becomes a member of a community by choice, Holly has thrown herself wholeheartedly into supporting our beloved Cornell community
  • a footnote to this Cornell story:  we recently learned that Holly in fact outranks all of the Baums in Cornell lineage
  • a member of her family was in the class of ’76 -- 1876
  • Holly has long served in leadership of a not for profit, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship for NFTE, dedicated to developing programs for teaching entrepreneurship and business planning to students in underserved high schools
  • at Holly’s inspiration, we connected NFTE with ILR nearly a decade ago, and each summer bring a busload of NFTE students to campus to learn about Cornell and the admissions process,
  • and we created a scholarship to support NFTE students admitted to Cornell - with, of course, a preference to ILR
  • and I am thrilled to say that the first recipient of support from the Baum and Wallace Family Scholarship graduated from Cornell in 2017 and from Howard Law School this past spring, and now is serving in the US Bankr Ct, D. Del., as law clerk to Judge Craig Goldblatt
  • and she is right here with us tonight - let me ask Emony Robertson, of the Cornell Class of 2017, to give us a wave
  • I am sure that, as Emony moves into private practice next year and grows into what will be an enormously successful career and become her firm’s lead bankruptcy partner, she will do what she can to support future generations of aspiring Cornell and Howard students
  • and let me ask that each and every alumni and friend who can join with us, think creatively about how you too can support future students and our school,
  • and then just do it.

Thank you again for honoring me by association with the incomparable Jerry Alpern, and most of all for honoring us by joining in support this great institution and its remarkable students.