Executive Director

Karen J. Greenberg

Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security.

Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law.  She is the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days (Oxford University Press, 2009), which was selected as one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post and Slate.com. She is co-editor with Joshua L. Dratel of The Enemy Combatant Papers: American Justice, the Courts, and the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge University Press, 2005), editor of the books The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Al Qaeda Now (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and editor of the NYU Review of Law and Security.  Her work is featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, TomDispatch.com, and on major news channels.  She is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Profile of Karen J. Greenberg in the New York Times.

Faculty Advisors

Stephen Holmes

Stephen Holmes is a Faculty Advisor at the Center on Law and Security and the Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law at NYU School of Law.
His fields of specialization include the history of liberalism, the disappointments of democratization after communism, and the difficulty of combating terrorism within the limits of liberal constitutionalism. In 2003, he was selected as a Carnegie Scholar. From 1997 to 2000, he was a professor of politics at Princeton. From 1985 to 1997, he was professor of politics and law at the Law School and Political Science Department of the University of Chicago. From 1979 to 1985, he taught at the Department of Government at Harvard University. He was also the editor-in-chief of the East European Constitutional Review from 1993-2003.  He is the author of Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Yale University Press, 1984), The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (Harvard University Press, 1993), Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1995), and co-author (with Cass Sunstein) of The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (Norton, 1999), and most recently, The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

 

Richard H. Pildes

Richard H. Pildes is a Faculty Advisor at the Center on Law and Security and a law professor at the New York University School of Law.
He specializes in constitutional law and legal issues involving the structure of democratic processes. He is the co-author of the casebook, The Law of Democracy (2nd ed. 2001) and the author of numerous academic articles that have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and other leading legal journals. His work has been cited numerous times by the United States Supreme Court, and he has lectured in many countries on constitutional issues. From 1988 to 2000, he was a professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. Professor Pildes received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in chemistry from Princeton University in 1979, and his J.D. degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1983, where he was Supreme Court Note Editor on the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. He is the author of "Between Civil Libertarianism and Executive Unilateralism: An Institutional Process Approach to Rights During Wartime" (co-authored with Sam Issacharoff).

 

Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Faculty Advisor at the Center on Law and Security and a law professor at Harvard Law School.
He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. He is also a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining the Harvard faculty, Feldman was Cecelia Goetz Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.  He was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2005.  In 2004 he was a visiting professor at Yale Law School and a fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center.  In 2003 he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law or interim constitution.   From 1999 to 2002, he was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.  Before that he served as a law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court (1998 to 1999) and to Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1997 to 1998). He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 1992. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a D.Phil. in Islamic Thought from Oxford University in 1994. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1997, serving as Book Reviews Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He is the author of three books: Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2005); What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation building (Princeton University Press 2004); and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2003).

 

David M. Golove

David M. Golove is a Faculty Advisor at the Center on Law and Security and is the Hiller Family Foundation Professor of Law and Director of the J.D./LL.M. Program in International Law at the NYU School of Law. 
He has secured a reputation as one of the most original scholars in constitutional law. Among his notable academic writings is a book-length article, "Treaty-Making and the Nation: The Historical Foundations of the Nationalist Conception of the Treaty Power," 98 Michigan Law Review 1075 (2000) . His other notable articles include "Against Free-Form Formalism," 70 NYU Law Review 1791 (1998); "Is NAFTA Constitutional?" 108 Harvard Law Review 801 (1995) (with Bruce Ackerman); "From Versailles to San Francisco: The Revolutionary Transformation of the War Powers," 70 Colorado Law Review 1491 (1999); "Philosophy of International Law,” Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law 808-934 (2002) (with Allen Buchanan). Professor Golove received his B.A. from Berkeley in 1979 and has law degrees from Boalt Hall and Yale. He teaches Constitutional Law and International Law. Professor Golove is a member of the faculty Executive Committee of the NYU Institute for International Law and Justice and Director of the J.D.-LL.M. program in international law.

 

Samuel J. Rascoff

Samuel J. Rascoff joined the NYU faculty as an Assistant Professor of Law in June 2008, and he is a faculty advisor at the Center on Law and Security. He was recently named a 2009 Carnegie Scholar. He came to the Law School from the New York City Police Department where, as Director of Intelligence Analysis, he created and led a team responsible for assessing the terrorist threat to the City. A graduate of Harvard, Oxford and the Yale Law School, he previously served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and to Second Circuit Judge Pierre N. Leval, and as a special assistant with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He was also an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz where his practice focused on the settlement of complex litigation. His research interests include counter-terrorism law, intelligence, and regulatory law and policy.

Staff

 

Sarvenaz Bakhtiar
Executive Assistant

Sarvenaz Bakhtiar is the Executive Assistant at the Center on Law and Security.  A native Farsi speaker, Sarvenaz has worked in DC on Capitol Hill as a grassroots coordinator for a non-profit group and also as a freelance writer for publications such as U.S. News and World Report.  Prior to joining the Center, Sarvenaz spent over a year studying and working in London.  She holds an M.A. in International Relations at the University of Westminster, London.

 

Nicole Bruno
Director of Programs

Nicole is the Director of Programs at the Center on Law and Security, where she assists with program strategy and content development. She was previously the Associate Director of Programs and Outreach. Prior to her work at the Center, she spent over two years at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York as a program associate for the Term Member Program and as program coordinator for the Studies Program. Nicole holds a BA cum laude in English literature with a minor in history from Fordham University at Lincoln Center.

 

Daniel Freifeld
Director of International Programs

Daniel Freifeld is the Director of International Programs for the Center on Law and Security.  Previously, he was a foreign policy adviser on Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and a program coordinator for the Near East South Asia Center at the U.S. Department of Defense, working in over 10 Middle Eastern countries. He speaks Turkish and French and conversational Arabic, Farsi, and Spanish. He holds a B.A. from Emory University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law and is a member of the Massachusetts Bar and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

 

Jeff Grossman
Editor

Jeff is the Center on Law and Security’s editor. He is both a journalist and an attorney.  He has written for The New York Times, Psychology Today, The Prince George’s Journal in Lanham, Md., and The Stamford Advocate in Stamford, Conn. As an attorney, he has served as in-house counsel for Gibraltar Management Company in Tarrytown, N.Y. He has degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, Emory University Law School, and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and holds a coxswain rating in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.

 

Francesca Laguardia
Director of Research

Francesca Laguardia is the Director of Research at the Center on Law and Security. Francesca worked at the Center as a researcher for over four years before joining the staff full time. She has a J.D. from New York University School of Law and is currently working on her dissertation for a Ph.D. from the Institute for Law and Society at New York University. Prior to returning to school Francesca worked as an investigative analyst in the Rackets Bureau at the New York County District Attorney's Office.

 

David Tucker
Director of Development and Business Affairs

David Tucker is the Director of Development and Business Affairs at the Center on Law and Security. David has several years of experience in non-profit, education, and arts administration and recently worked in the public relations office at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He has consulted on strategic communications and fundraising campaigns for performing arts organizations and museums around the country.