At the end of a corridor in the stacks of Langdell Library, a pink note card dangles from a bookshelf.

The card marks the way to the office of Diane L. Rosenfeld, which is marked only by a non-descript door at the end of an aisle of international law books.

From this out-of-the-way corner of Harvard Law School (HLS), Rosenfeld speaks out to the Harvard campus as an advocate for women’s rights—especially for their right to fight sexual violence.

As a fellow who came to HLS two years ago from the U.S. Justice Department’s Violence Against Women Office, Rosenfeld brought her enthusiasm to stop sexual violence against women to Women’s Studies 131, “Women, Violence and the Law.”

This past Monday afternoon, Rosenfeld sits at her desk tearing off pieces of a portobello mushroom, grilled onion and swiss cheese sandwich as she prepares for class. On the wall hangs a watercolor she painted herself.

Rosenfeld says she views education as her best hope to inspire other women to take a stand against sexual violence.

“It’s really important to teach people not to be passive participants in their lives and in their cultures,” she says. “They have the power to change things they see are harmful.”

Rosenfeld spent the night before trying to teach these lessons at a panel discussion as part of Take Back the Night’s week-long campaign to raise awareness of sexual violence.

The panelists spoke after a showing of Rape Is..., a short documentary about dealing with sexual assault. Between victims’ harrowing stories, Rosenfeld offered her own insistent voice.

“We have the right to say no,” she said in the documentary. “We have the right to exist in full citizenship without the threat of sexual violence hanging over us.”

In the panel discussion, Rosenfeld assumes the voice of an academic, citing statistics and insisting that women stand up for rights that are due them.

She says she finds her own rights infringed on too often. As the discussion gets underway, Rosenfeld recounts how she and the other female panelists went to use the women’s bathroom and it was locked—while the men’s bathroom was not—an indication, she says, of bothersome safety concerns.

“Women are not really free citizens with the same rights as men,” Rosenfeld says.

But Rosenfeld has been wading through the intricacies of women’s rights and violence against women too long to be surprised by the horrific stories of rape in the documentary or the locked bathroom door.

All of the energy and time she puts into thinking about sexual violence against women comes out in the “Women, Violence and the Law” class she teaches twice a week.