"Civil Liberties in America Today"

8:00 PM Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Dennison Theatre

"A Conversation with Anthony Romero "

3:10 PM Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Gallagher Business Building Room 123

Please join us for a seminar and lecture with Anthony Romero. Born in New York City in 1965 and a graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and the Stanford University Law School, Mr. Romero had a distinguished career in public-interest activism before becoming, one week before the 9/11 attacks, the executive director of the ACLU, which is the nation’s most prominent organization dedicated to the protection of civil liberties. Under his leadership, the ACLU has opposed some of the government’s key policies in the war on terror, including the Patriot Act and the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In 2007, he co-wrote with Dina Temple-Raston In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror, an examination of the erosion of civil rights in the post 9/11 era.

Mr. Romero also has led the ACLU in its unique legal challenge to the patents held by a private company on the human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer; in its landmark lawsuit challenging Arizona’s anti-immigrant law that invites law enforcement to engage in racial profiling; in its high-profile litigation and lobbying efforts to win the freedom to marry for same-sex couples; in its nationwide campaign to end mass incarceration, which aims to achieve a 50 percent reduction in the number of Americans behind bars; and in establishing the John Adams Project, a joint effort with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to assist the under-resourced military defense lawyers in the Guantánamo military commissions.

The seminar and lecture are free and open to the public.