In principle, any programming language can be used as the implementation language in a compiler construction course. The Clojure programming language is a dialect of Lisp. Clojure is natural for implementing the Lisp nanopass translation algorithm. However, it can also be used to enhance the projects in a traditional compiler course in several ways. Clojure makes it convenient to write JVM code thereby allowing the virtual machine code generated to be converted to Java class files. Clojure makes it possible for the students to write their own lexer and parser generators. And Clojure’s s-expressions all but eliminate the issue of cascading project failures. We argue that Clojure has many advantages as an implementation language in a compiler construction course.