The news from Baghdad this month tends to make me share Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.’s famous preference for “not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.”

In May 2003, Matias Garcia, a farm laborer from Oaxaca, Mexico, set out to cross the U.S. border to find work. For Garcia, like hundreds of others each year, the attempt proved fatal—he perished on a 32-mile trek across the blistering Arizona desert.

If you thought the first year of law school tested your mettle, try running for Congress. It’s not always easy being a Harvard lawyer on the campaign trail.

Hill Harper ’92 heard the same questions again and again. A graduate of Harvard Law School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an actor currently starring on the hit TV show “CSI: NY,” Harper frequently visited schools to talk to black youths, many of whom told him how difficult and often hopeless it seemed to stay in school or pursue a career.

Jay Hebert ’ 86 is president of the Harvard Law School Association. He chairs the communications practice group of the law firm of Vinson & Elkins, and he’s a partner in the firm’s business and international group.