Susan Gzesh

Susan Gzesh is Instructional Professor (previously Senior Instructional Professor) in the College of the University of Chicago.  From 2001 until 2020, she was Senior Lecturer and Executive Director of the University of Chicago Pozen Family Center for Human Rights. She is currently associate faculty with the Center for Latin American Studies, the Friedrich Katz Center for Mexican Studies, and the Chicago Studies Program at the University of Chicago. She is fluent in Spanish. She has been a member of the State Bar of Illinois since 1980.  She has practiced law in federally funded legal services, private practice, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, concentrating on the representation of immigrants and refugees in immigration, labor, and civil rights matters - and representing Latino candidates in local elections. In 1989 she was a founding attorney of the Midwest Immigrant Rights Center, now the National Immigrant Justice Center. She represented individual refugees and religious leaders who participated in the 1980s Sanctuary Movement.  Susan was a Fulbright Lecturer at the Universidad de Guadalajara in 1990, served on the 1992 Clinton-Gore Presidential Transition Team, and was a member of the Illinois Governor’s New Americans Initiative advisory board. From 1996 to 2001, she was the Director of the Mexico-U.S. Advocates Network, coordinating the Regional Network of Civil Organizations for Migration (the NGO counterpart of the intergovernmental Regional Conference on Migration), as well as the Chicago-Michoacan Project and the Chicago-Mexico Leadership Initiative, all projects which promoted cross-border, transnational dialogues on migration policy and human rights. Gzesh participated in civil society delegations to the United Nations High Level Dialogue on Migration & Development (New York, 2013) and the Global Forum on Migration and Development (Athens, 2009; Mexico, 2010) and was a keynote speaker at the Peoples’ Global Alliance on Migration in Mexico (2010). She has been a speaker at seminars, conferences, and events in the U.S. and Mexico on topics related to human rights and migration. She is a member of the Board of Directors of KAM-Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park.