Introducing: 2020 Sorensen Center Scholar-in-Residence, Wolfgang Kaleck
Date: January 8, 2020
Wolfgang Kaleck, founder and General Secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin, has joined the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice at City University of New York School of Law as 2020 Scholar-in-Residence. Throughout the spring semester, he will lead a series of human rights seminars on a range of topics, including transnational human rights litigation, social movements, and business and human rights. The series kicks off on Wednesday, February 5 with a discussion on “Global Social Justice is Possible: Transnational Human Rights Litigation in Times of Cholera.”
Wolfgang Kaleck is a human rights attorney at the forefront of the legal fight to hold powerful individuals, corporations, and governments around the world accountable for human rights abuses. He has worked in Argentina to stand with the mothers of persons “disappeared” under the military dictatorship; with exiled Syrian communities to assemble cases on torture against senior officials in the Assad government; in Central America to investigate the Guatemalan’s massacres of indigenous people; in New York, as a partner in action against Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary Defense, for the torture he sanctioned after 9/11 in Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib; and in Moscow where he represents whistleblower Edward Snowden. His most recent book is Law Versus Power: Our Global Fight for Human Rights.
The Sorensen Center’s Scholar-in-Residence Program features accomplished legal scholars and practitioners. Visiting scholars guest lecture, host seminars, speak at public events, and engage with faculty and students. Previous Sorensen Center Scholars-in-Residence include Justice Richard Goldstone, Judge Rosemary Barkett, Senator George Mitchell, Justice Albie Sachs, and Kenyan lawyer Maina Kiai.
Established in 2014, the Sorensen Center is led by Founding Executive Director L. Camille Massey and named after Ted Sorensen. The Center trains social justice lawyers to protect rights of those affected by instability, conflict, and repression and works from local to global to advance scholarship, intellectual exchange, and advocacy for international peace and justice. As the first named center at CUNY Law, the Sorensen Center builds on and enhances the Law School’s tradition of practicing law in the service of human needs.