Victor Pineda is Senior Research Fellow and visiting scholar at the Haas Institute of the University of California, Berkeley. His expertise lies in the areas of disability rights, urban planning and human rights.
Pineda is the President of World Enabled, a non-profit organization that promotes the rights and dignities of persons with disabilities. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) innovative research grant, a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the Thomas Jefferson Award, the Tom Clausen Fellowship for Business and Policy, and the Paul G. Hearne Award.
He is also Adjunct Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley.
Areas of Expertise: Disability rights, urban planning, human rights
Robin Washington is a longtime transportation writer, particularly focused on the evolving technology and social impacts of driverless cars over the past two years, writing for The Boston Globe, WIRED, WGBH, and Wisconsin Public Radio. A Fellow in Science Broadcasting Journalism at WGBH TV Boston, Washington has lectured at Harvard, MIT, Brown, and dozens of other academic institutions, and has been an adjunct faculty member at both Northeastern University and Emerson College. Throughout his career, Washington has appeared on NPR, MSBNC, Fox News, ABC News, CNN, and the BBC.
Areas of Expertise: Self-driving cars, transportation technology, transportation legislation, civil rights movement, Judaism, Black Judaism
Location: Duluth, Minnesota with part time residence in Massachusetts. He works out of the studios of Wisconsin Public Radio and WGBH Boston.
Elizabeth OuYang has been a civil rights attorney and advocate for the past 30 years. She is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights and New York University’s College of Arts and Science. Her areas of expertise include voting, immigration, media accountability, and combating hate crimes and police brutality.
OuYang’s cases and advocacy have been covered extensively in national and local media. Among her many notable clients include Private Danny Chen, a 19-year-old solider found dead in Afghanistan after weeks of racial mistreatment and hazing by his superiors. One of her more recent cases involved Mohammad Sarfaraz Hussain, a 19-year-old who faced removal from the U.S. in 2003 after complying with the special registration program targeting Arabs, Muslims and South Asians. He was granted citizenship in 2016. In 2000, she was appointed by president Bill Clinton to serve as a special assistant to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Civil Rights Attorney and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights & New York University’s College of Arts and Sciences
Location: New York, New York
Areas of Expertise: Voting, Immigration, Media Accountability, Hate crimes and Police Brutality + Race, Sex, and Disability Discrimination
Kristen Clarke is president and executive director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. In this capacity she is a legal advocate on behalf of the rights of communities of color, especially in the areas of social justice, equal economic opportunity, criminal justice and judicial diversity, among others.
Before joining the Lawyers’ Committee, Clarke spent several years at the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund where she helped lead the organization’s efforts in voting rights and election law reform across the country. Before joining the LDF, she worked at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where she served as a federal prosecutor, handling cases of police brutality, hate crimes, and human trafficking. Clarke is a regular contributor to a number of outlets including CNN, MSNBC and TV One as well as a 2017 recipient of Quinnipiac University’s Thurgood Marshall Award, among others.
President and Executive Director, National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Areas of Expertise: Criminal justice, police brutality, civil liberties, hate speech, civil litigation, diversity
Roula Allouch is an attorney with the law firm Graydon, practicing in commercial litigation, employment law and civil rights. She earned her juris doctor from the University of Kentucky School of Law in 2006. Allouch is the Chair of the National Board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). At CAIR, she monitors and analyzes policies and statements that foster discriminatory behavior toward American Muslims. She is based in Cincinnati, OH.
Chair of the National Board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
Derrick E. White is a visiting associate professor of African and African American Studies and History at Dartmouth College.
White’s research focuses on modern black history and sports history. He is currently working on a book that inspects the intersections of college, sports and race. Specifically, he focuses on how longtime Florida A&M University football coach Jake Gaither built a program in the midst of segregation. The story of FAMU reveals the history of black college football and serves to examine the larger issues Black college athletes faced in the twentieth century.
Visiting Associate Professor of African/African American Studies & History at Dartmouth College
Location: Hanover, NH
Areas of Expertise: African American Civil Rights and Black Power Organizations, Sports and Race, Social Justice and Racial Politics
Patricia Gándara teaches and co-directs the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. She also chairs the Working Group on Education for the University of California-Mexico Initiative in which she is spearheading a number of California-Mexico education projects.
Her most current research includes the impact of migration on Mexican origin students in the US and those returning to Mexico, as well as pathways to educational attainment for Mexican and U.S. students of Mexican origin. She specializes in language policy and English learners as well as the impact of offering BA degrees at community colleges.
Gándara recently co-edited two journal issues: Language Policy (2012) and Teachers College Record (2013) that summarize research conducted in Arizona for the Horne v Flores Supreme Court case, which dealt with the rights of English Learners to an equitable education. The studies pointed out the inequities in Arizona’s policy of providing English drill in lieu of access to a standard curriculum as required by the Supreme Court in Lau v Nichols (1974). She is the author of many books including “Forbidden Language: English Learners and Restrictive Language Policies” with Megan Hopkins, and “The Bilingual Advantage: Language, Literacy, and the U.S. Labor Market” with Rebecca Callahan.
In 2011, Gándara was appointed to President Obama’s Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, and in 2015 received the Distinguished Career Award from the Scholars of Color.
Research Professor and Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA
Areas of Expertise: Language Policy, Bilingual Education, Latino Education (especially education of Latinas), US-Mexico Education Issues; Higher Education Access and Equity
Executive Director and President of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), Mee Moua, is also a former three-term Minnesota State Senator, serving as a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. While in office, Moua chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was responsible for oversight in all state agencies: criminal, civil, and administrative law & procedures.
Moua’s work with the AAJC focuses on advocating on behalf of civil and human rights for Asian American and other vulnerable communities in the United States. These areas and issues include affirmative action, anti-Asian violence prevention/race relations, census, immigrant rights, immigration, language access, media/television diversity, and voting rights.
Faiza Patel is the co-director of the non-partisan public policy institute the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to ensure U.S. counterterrorism laws and policies respect human rights norms and fundamental freedoms.
She has testified before Congress opposing police surveillance of Muslims and developed legislation creating an independent Inspector General for the NYPD.
Patel has been a guest on number of television programs, including ABC’s Up Close, Bloomberg TV and Current TV.
Co-Director, Liberty and National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice
Areas of Expertise: Civil Liberties, Islam in America, Counterterrorism Laws, Law, National Security
Location: New York, NY
Contact Info:
Please contact the Brennan Center’s communications manager, Seth Hoy
Paul Butler is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching in the areas of criminal law and race and the law. He served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, where his specialty was public corruption.
Butler is one of the nation’s most frequently consulted scholars on issues of race and criminal justice. He has been featured on 60 Minutes, Nightline, ABC, CBS and NBC, and is a frequent guest on NPR’s Tell Me More.
Butler has published numerous academic articles in journals including the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review, and is the author of the book, “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice.”
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Areas of Expertise: Criminal Justice, Civil Rights & Race Relations, Public Corruption
