Susan Gzesh

Susan R. Gzesh is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Program of the University of Chicago and a Senior Lecturer in the College, a position she has held since 2001.  Ms. Gzesh began teaching immigration and policy at the University of Chicago as a Lecturer in Law beginning in 1992.  The Human Rights Program is an interdisciplinary project which supports curriculum, research, events, and internships for students and faculty from all departments and schools of the University.  The Human Rights Program cooperates with the Law School on the summer Human Rights internships.  

For two decades following her 1977 graduation from the University of Michigan Law School, Gzesh specialized in immigration, labor, and civil rights. She worked with migrant farm workers in Michigan and Minnesota and with urban immigrants and refugees at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago and the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, as well as in private practice. From 1995 until 2001, she directed the Mexico-U.S. Advocates Network, a bi-national coalition of civil society organizations which advocated for the human rights of immigrants in the bi-national and regional context.  During the same period, she served as legal adviser to the Embassy of Mexico on immigration matters.  

She currently teaches interdisciplinary courses on Contemporary Issues in Human Rights, the Practice of Human Rights, Human Rights: Alien and Citizen, and Human Rights in Mexico. Her courses are cross-listed with the Law School and open to all students.  Her research interests and recent policy projects include developing a human rights framework to link migration and development policies, a study of the limits of Executive discretion in U.S. immigration policy, and a proposal to expand the definition of forced migration to include some classes of so-called “economic migrants.”

Gzesh’s career has included a semester as a Fulbright lecturer at the Universidad de Guadalajara (Mexico), service on the immigration policy group for President Barack Obama’s campaign, service on the Clinton-Gore Transition Team.  She is currently advising the Mexican Foreign Ministry on the impact of changes in U.S. immigration policy on the rights of Mexican immigrants.  In 2008, she served as an adviser to the United Nations Global Migration Group in the writing and editing of the report “International Migration and Human Rights: Challenges and Opportunities on the 60th Anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.”