Founder and Director, Center for Law and Public Trust; Distinguished Scholar in Residence and Adjunct Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
Vanita Gupta
Vanita Gupta has made a career of defending the civil and human rights of all individuals. As the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama, Ms. Gupta led work on policing, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, fair housing, hate crimes, religious discrimination, and human trafficking crimes. She later served from 2021 to 2024 as the 19th United States Associate Attorney General, the third-ranking official at the Department of Justice. Following her service as President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, she founded and became Director of NYU Law’s Center for Law and Public Trust, and continues to be a Distinguished Scholar in Residence and Adjunct Professor of Law.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.