Faculty Director
Vincent M. Southerland, associate professor of law and director of the Criminal Defense and Re-entry Clinic at NYU Law, joined the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law as its inaugural Executive Director in February 2017. He has dedicated his career to advancing racial justice and civil rights. Vincent comes to NYU Law after serving as an Assistant Federal Public Defender with the Federal Defenders for the Southern District of New York since 2015. Prior to his time at the Federal Defenders, Vincent spent seven years at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where he was a Senior Counsel. While at LDF, he engaged in litigation and advocacy at the intersection of race and criminal justice, including the successful representation of people sentenced to death across the American South and children sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He also led LDF’s advocacy efforts around race and policing, and was lead counsel in school desegregation and employment discrimination matters. Vincent previously served as a staff attorney at The Bronx Defenders, and an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. He began his career as a law clerk to the Honorable Theodore McKee, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the Honorable Louis H. Pollak, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Vincent holds an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, received his JD from Temple University School of Law and his BA from the University of Connecticut. He serves on the boards of The Bail Project, the Federal Defenders of New York, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Faculty Directors Emeriti
Anthony Thompson, Professor of Clinical Law Emeritus, was the Center’s founding faculty director. Professor Thompson retired from the NYU Law faculty, of which he was a member for 25 years and taught courses in criminal justice, civil litigation and leadership. Thompson is part of the Duke Corporate Education Global Educator Network and has provided executive education to a number of global companies focusing on leadership and strategy execution. He received numerous prizes for his teaching, including the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award, which recognizes teaching excellence, leadership, social justice activism, and community building; and the Law School’s Podell Distinguished Teaching Award. Thompson was recognized by El Diario in 2011 with “The EL” award, as one of the “outstanding Latinos in the Tri-State area,” for his community service. He earned his JD at Harvard Law School and his BS Ed from Northwestern University.
Deborah N. Archer, Margaret B. Hoppin Professor of Law and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at NYU Law, joined the Center as its faculty co-director in February 2019. Archer joined the NYU Law faculty in 2018, following a distinguished career as a professor of law at New York Law School (NYLS). While at NYLS, Professor Archer served as the school’s inaugural dean of diversity and inclusion and as associate dean for academic affairs and student engagement. She also led NYLS’s Racial Justice Project, a legal advocacy initiative that worked to advance racial justice and civil rights. Archer is president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and serves on the board of the Legal Aid Society. For many years, she also served on the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board and the board of the New York Civil Liberties Union. In recognition of her work, the New York Law Journal named her one of its 2016 Top Women in Law. Before beginning her career in law teaching, Archer was assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and a Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow at the ACLU.
Executive Director
Jason D. Williamson joined the Center as its Executive Director in June 2021. He previously served as the deputy director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, where he began working as a staff attorney in January 2011. At the ACLU, he focused primarily on Fourth Amendment, police practices, and public defense reform litigation. Prior to joining the ACLU, Jason worked as a litigation associate at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in New York, and served as a law clerk for Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr. in the Eastern District of New York from 2007-2008. He began his legal career in New Orleans in the months following Hurricane Katrina, first as a staff attorney for the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and later as a staff attorney and founding member of Juvenile Regional Services (now called the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights), which provides legal representation for indigent youth in Orleans Parish Juvenile Court. Jason also serves as an adjunct clinical professor at New York University School of Law. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Harvard University in 1998, and his JD from NYU Law in 2006. Jason is a devout Rastafarian, committed husband, and proud father of twin daughters.
Director of the Initiative for Community Power
Andrew Friedman is founding director of the Initiative for Community Power at NYU School of Law. The Initiative is an ambitious, multi-faceted effort to combine the weight and assets of a global academic institution with the nimble, community-grounded tools of advocacy and organizing. Its goal is to catalyze understanding, innovation, and high-impact work in order to accelerate social change towards a more equitable, democratic, and racially just society. The Initiative combines scholarship, field-building, experiential education, academic convenings, internships and fellowships to examine inequality and anti-democracy, and the links between the two. The Initiative works to challenge and disrupt both. Andrew comes to the Initiative after decades of work founding and leading some of the highest impact base-building organizations in the United States, such as Make the Road New York and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Distinguished Scholar in Residence
Justine Olderman holds a joint appointment as Distinguished Scholar in Residence with the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law and Senior Research Scholar in the Litmus program of the NYU Marron Institute. Justine joined NYU in 2024 after serving as the Executive Director of The Bronx Defenders (BxD) since 2018. As Executive Director, Justine led the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic; embraced unionization and negotiated one of the most progressive bargaining agreements in the field; oversaw the development and implementation of major DEI initiatives; expanded BxD's Early Defense program, creating an off ramp to the legal system; deepened the organization's community engagement work through the creation of the Bronx Cannabis Hub and the Bronx Leadership & Organizing Center; grew BxD's policy and organizing work, which helped secure bail and discovery reform as well as the decriminalization of marijuana and driving with a suspended license; and supported several high-profile impact litigation cases brought by BxD that radically reduced ICE's power to detain immigrants, held NYPD's use of sealed records unconstitutional, ensured due process for people facing the loss of their home through the issuance of orders of protection, and secured a first-of-its-kind, pre-litigation settlement with the City for violating the right of protestors. Justine joined BxD in 2000 as a staff attorney. During her 23 years at BxD, she also held the roles of Supervisor, Team Leader, Managing Attorney of the Criminal Defense Practice, and Managing Director of BxD before succeeding Robin Steinberg as the Executive Director. Justine graduated magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from New York University School of Law. She spent two years clerking for Judge Robert J. Ward in the Southern District of New York. She also holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Operations Coordinator
Layla Al (she/her) is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she majored in Global Studies and minored in Human Rights. On campus, she served as Co-President of the African and Caribbean Student Association, Co-Chair of the Student Advisory Board at the Institute of Politics, and a Student Advisor for the Center for Identity + Inclusion. During her undergraduate summers, she explored her policy and legal research interests through internships with Urban Labs, the Chicago Community Trust, and the House on Foreign Affairs Committee. Prior to joining the Center, Layla worked as a Paralegal at the ACLU's National Security Project, an Operations Associate at KHIRY, and a Research Assistant at the Zomia Center. She served as Co-Shop Steward for the ACLU support staff shop of Local 2110.
Staff Attorney
Tolu Lawal (she/her) joined the Center in September 2022. Prior to joining the Center, she was a Racial Justice Legal Fellow with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, working on legislative and policy analysis, public education and community collaboration, legal research and restorative/transformative justice through a race-specific focus. While a student at NYU Law, she served as the Co-Chair of the Black Allied Law Student Association (BALSA) and one of the lead organizers of the Racism Lives Here Too campaign. She worked at the Center as an intern in 2017, as well as an intern at the ACLU Racial Justice Project in 2018, and with NYU's Juvenile Defenders Clinic from 2018 to 2019. She also engages in advocacy, supporting Black and Brown-led groups committed to charting the road to liberation for all people, particularly those who are formerly incarcerated. She currently provides legal support to the Justice Impact Alliance. She is also a co-founder and co-lead organizer of Unlock the Bar (UTB), a New York-based campaign and coalition of allied and systems-impacted law students and lawyers who are advocating for a just and equitable legal profession. She received her J.D. from New York University Law School in the Class of 2019 and received her B.A. from Duke University in 2014.
Legal Fellow
Djuna Schamus (she/her) is a recent graduate of NYU Law, where she focused on confronting the injustices of the criminal punishment system. In the Racial Justice Clinic, Djuna provided support to individuals incarcerated in NY state as they prepared for parole hearings, and in the Civil Rights in the Criminal Legal System Clinic, she represented incarcerated clients in disciplinary hearings and appeals of their unlawful disciplinary sentences. During her law school summers, Djuna interned at the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law. Prior to law school, Djuna provided research and archival support to documentary filmmakers and photographers, where she came to understand the power of storytelling and the role that narrative plays in social movements. She also spent many years volunteering as an abortion doula and remains committed to centering empathy, care, and relationship-building in all of her work. Djuna received her J.D. from New York University Law School in 2024 and her B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University in 2018.