Ramzi Kassem is the founding director of CLEAR. He is a Professor of Law at the City University of New York. His writing, teaching, and legal practice all aim to contest the expressions and excesses of the sprawling U.S. security state, both domestically and abroad.
In support of clients, communities, and social movements, Ramzi has litigated civil rights, constitutional, criminal, immigration, national security, wartime detention, and war crime cases at all levels of the U.S. federal judiciary, before military commissions and international tribunals, and in various administrative proceedings.
His work with his students, colleagues, and co-counsel has resulted in groundbreaking civil rights litigation challenging the U.S. security state and has led to the exoneration or liberation of clients incarcerated, often for years, at Guantánamo Bay and in federal and immigration prisons. Ramzi has long worked with and within various coalitions and movements, including Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) and Movement for Black Lives (M4BL).
Before joining the CUNY faculty, Ramzi taught law at Yale and Fordham. He is a proud immigrant, an incorrigible New Yorker, and a Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellow. He is a graduate of Columbia College and holds law degrees from Columbia Law School, where he was a Senior Editor for the Columbia Law Review, and from the Sorbonne.
