FPA/AMNH Global Migration Panel

Prof. Ramzi Kassem - Speaker
Former Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration, White House Domestic Policy Council

Ramzi Kassem was the Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration at the White House Domestic Policy Council and both a Professor of Law and the Founding Director of CLEAR at the City University of New York. His writing, teaching, and clinical legal practice all aim to contest the expressions and excesses of the sprawling U.S. security state, both domestically and abroad.

In support of clients, communities, and social movements, Professor Kassem and his students have litigated civil rights, constitutional, criminal, immigration, national security, wartime detention, and war crime cases at all levels of the federal judiciary, before military commissions and international tribunals, and in various administrative proceedings.

Professor Kassem argued Tanzin v. Tanvir before the U.S. Supreme Court, a landmark civil rights case challenging the federal government’s abuse of watchlists, resulting in a unanimous decision for the clinic’s clients. In Raza v. City of New York, another groundbreaking litigation challenging secret police surveillance, Professor Kassem helped negotiate an historic settlement restricting surveillance of constitutionally protected religious and political activity.

Dr. Felix V. Matos Rodriguez - Moderator
Chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY)

Félix V. Matos Rodríguez has served as the eighth Chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY) since May 2019, focusing his tenure on championing student equity across the University system. Chancellor Matos Rodríguez, whose historic appointment makes him the first educator of color and the first Latino to lead the nation’s largest urban university, oversees a system of 25 colleges with an enrollment of over 225,000 students and an operating budget of $3.8 billion.

As Chancellor, Dr. Matos Rodríguez has doubled down on the University’s commitment to lifting students and graduates from all backgrounds up the socioeconomic ladder. This mission has been especially critical throughout the coronavirus pandemic, during which the Chancellor erased more than $100 million in owed tuition and fees for more than 57,000 students through the CUNY Comeback program, announced a year before President Biden’s federal debt forgiveness program. The Chancellor also led the University to formally discontinue its policy of withholding transcripts from current and former students with unpaid balances.

A former chair of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), he continues to serve on the steering committee for HACU’s Leadership Academy. In 2021, he joined the board of the Association for a Better New York (ABNY) and was named co-chair of the New York City Regional Economic Development Council (NYCREDC). He also serves on the boards of Phipps Houses and the United Way of New York City, and he is a member of the Research Alliance for New York City Schools steering committee. A cum laude graduate in Latin American studies from Yale University, Matos Rodríguez received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. He has taught at Yale, Northeastern University, Boston College, the Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, City College and Hunter College, and was affiliated with the history department at the CUNY Graduate Center. At Hunter, he also directed the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, one of the largest and most important Latino research centers in the United States.

FPA 2024 Cultural Diplomacy Dinner

May 9, 2024

FPA Annual Dinner 2024

Jun 6, 2024