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W. Haywood Burns Program in Human & Civil Rights

2023–24 W. Haywood Burns Chair

Vince Warren

Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Vince Warren

“When people say, ‘We need you to do the impossible,’ we don’t say that the law won’t support it—we try to find creative ways to push the law, to expand the law. Arthur Kinoy, founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said, ‘The role of a lawyer is to embroil themselves in the social issues of the times.’ I’m very excited to be at CUNY; there’s no better place to be.”

Vince Warren

Biography

About Vince Warren

Vince Warren is a renowned expert on racial injustice and discriminatory policing and is the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He oversees the organization’s groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work, using international and domestic law to challenge human rights abuses, including racial, gender, and LGBTQIA+ injustice.

Under Warren’s leadership, the Center for Constitutional Rights challenged the constitutionality of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices, ended the policy of holding people in long-term solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay Prison, and helped establish the persecution of LGBTQIA+ people as a crime against humanity.

In his teaching and public presentations, Warren explores social movement lawyering and the roles lawyers, activists, journalists, and artists play in mobilizing movements that advance racial, economic, and social justice.

Events and initiatives

A year of movement lawyering

April 3, 2023

The Global Fight for Queer Liberation

Frank Mugisha in conversation with Vince Warren, Pamela Spees ’98, and Professor Jeena Shah.

Archived video

Watch the conversations