About:

Lawrence Moss is Distinguished Lecturer and Rita E. Hauser Director of the Human Rights Program at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. Prior to this, he represented Human Rights Watch at the UN for seven years, including negotiations to create the UN Human Rights Council, the annual elections of Council members, reform of the treaty monitoring body system, Security Council response to crisis situations. In 2011 he led a successful global NGO campaign to force Syria to withdraw its candidacy for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. Moss is a graduate of Brown University and Stanford Law School. After working in a feminist law firm, a civil rights law firm, and as a public defender in Seattle, he spent eight months in Latin America, returning to prepare the initial reports of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First) on Central America. He also served as founding Chair of the NYC Bar Association’s Special Committee on the UN and on the Association’s human rights committee, and continues to represent the bar association at the UN. In the 1980s, Moss was the Chair of the New Democratic Coalition, and then served 16 years as an elected member of the New York State Democratic Committee representing Greenwich Village and Lower Manhattan. As Chair of the Reform Caucus, he led the Democratic Party to support universal single-payer healthcare, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, and to oppose military intervention in Iraq. He was instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty in New York State.