Michael H. Posner is a Professor of Business and Society at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where he is launching the first-ever center on business and human rights at a business school. Posner served from 2009 to 2013 in the Obama Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. From 1978 to 2009, he led Human Rights First, the New York-based human rights advocacy organization.

Posner advocated a rights-based approach to national security, challenging the practice of torture, combating discrimination, and refugee protection. As Assistant Secretary, he traveled extensively to meet with foreign officials and representatives of civil society in numerous countries including China, Russia, Egypt, Burma, Bahrain, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He has been a prominent voice in support of human rights protections in global business operations in the manufacturing supply chain, the extractives industry, and the information and communications technology sector.

Posner played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980, as well as the Torture Victim Protection Act, which was adopted in 1992. In 1998, he led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of California Law School, lectured at Yale Law School from 1981 to 1984, and at Columbia Law School from 1984 to 2008.