For those who care about titles, I am a Professor of the Practice of Government at Cornell University. Like most people, however, I have diverse interests that are not well captured by the content of my business card. If I were to sum up the professional side of my life, I would say that I am a writer, litigator and teacher. But all my work shares common themes, the most important of which is that I am opposed to demonization in all its forms. I long ago distilled my personal philosophy to eight words: There is no them, there is only us.
This philosophy links me, at a level of shared humanity, to people who have caused unimaginable pain, but also to those who have endured it. It links me to people whose beliefs and behavior I admire a great deal, but also to those whose values I abhor. In every way that matters, I know that I am no different from them and they are no different from me. If history and science teach us anything, it is that any of us can do monstrous things, and if all of us can be monstrous, then none of us are monsters, which is why I do not believe in the Other, that mythical creature we are so quick to find and eager to cast out.
In my work—on the page, in the courtroom and in the classroom—I try to bring this philosophy to life. I have written a slew of articles and three books: Thanks for Everything, Now Get Out: Can We Restore Neighborhoods Without Destroying Them? (Yale 2021); What Changed When Everything Changed: 9/11 and the Making of National Identity (Yale 2013); and Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon & Schuster 2006). Guantánamo won a bunch of awards, which was very nice. I am finishing a book on our determination to cast people out, which asks who and what is forgiven in American life.
As a civil rights lawyer, I was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), which gave Guantánamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in federal court, and in Munaf v. Geren 2008), which gave American citizens the right to challenge their detention by the U.S. government, regardless of where they are held in the world.
Presently I represent Abu Zubaydah, who was imprisoned and tortured in CIA black sites and whose interrogation in 2002 and 2003 prompted the Bush Administration to draft the infamous "torture memos.” I am also the director of The Compassionate Release Project, which represents federal prisoners in motions for compassionate release.
You can read some of my short essays on these and related topics here.
B.A., Cornell University, 1982
J.D., Northwestern University Law School, 1988
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