Ramzi Kassem

About Ramzi Kassem

Ramzi Kassem is a Professor of Law at the City University of New York. His writing, teaching, and clinical legal practice grapple with the expressions and excesses of the sprawling U.S. security state, both domestically and abroad.

From 2022 to 2024, Professor Kassem took leave to serve as a Senior Policy Advisor at the White House. At the Domestic Policy Council, he led Interagency Policy Committees and other complex processes to support and drive the President’s agenda on a host of sensitive concerns ranging from the immigration court backlog and immigration legislation and regulations, to watchlisting, screening, and profiling policy, to countering the threats posed by commercial spyware. He also collaborated with the National Security Council Intelligence Programs Directorate and with the NSC Transborder Directorate. Professor Kassem is the first CUNY faculty member named to serve at the White House.

Professor Kassem has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Second Circuit (including en banc), the D.C. Circuit, several federal district courts, the Military Commission at Guantánamo Bay, and in immigration courts.

In 2009, Professor Kassem founded CLEAR, an award-winning clinic and legal non-profit at CUNY School of Law. For over a decade, he also directed or co-directed the law school’s Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic. Before joining the CUNY faculty, Professor Kassem taught law at Yale and Fordham.

In addition to law review articles and contributed book chapters, Professor Kassem’s writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian and other outlets. He is also frequently interviewed and quoted in these major news outlets and beyond. He has lectured broadly overseas, spanning a dozen countries on four continents.

Professor Kassem is a proud immigrant and an incorrigible New Yorker. He is a graduate of Columbia College and holds law degrees from Columbia Law School, where he was a Senior Editor for the Columbia Law Review, and from the Sorbonne.

Among other honors, Professor Kassem is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a member of the inaugural cohort of Freedom Scholars selected nationwide in recognition of their work towards social, racial, and economic justice.

Notable Cases and Advocacy:

Civil Rights:

• 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 and co-counsel negotiated an historic settlement restricting surveillance of constitutionally protected religious and political activity.

Law of War:

• Professor Kassem and his students represented fifteen prisoners of various nationalities incarcerated without fair process at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram Air Base, and other secret or disclosed U.S. facilities worldwide. Their advocacy at all levels of the federal judiciary, in military tribunals, before administrative and international bodies, and in the media has established important law-of-war precedent and resulted in the liberation of twelve clients so far.
• In United States v. Ahmed al-Darbi, Professor Kassem was lead defense counsel before a Military Commission on charges of war crimes for the only prisoner released from Guantánamo during the Trump administration.
• Professor Kassem also negotiated client repatriations or resettlements in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Yemen.

Criminal Defense:

• Professor Kassem argued Farhane v. United States before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sitting en banc, resulting in a landmark ruling under the Sixth Amendment upholding the constitutional rights of naturalized U.S. citizens.
• Professor Kassem has appeared as defense counsel or advised defense teams in federal terrorism cases, including United States v. Uzair Paracha, which resulted in the exoneration and repatriation to Pakistan of his client after seventeen years of incarceration.

Immigration:

• Professor Kassem and his students have also represented numerous immigrants and asylum-seekers in immigration court, before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and in federal courts.

Human Rights

• Professor Kassem was part of a three-member delegation of international legal experts invited by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to assess the state of emergency in France.
• In connection with his cases, Professor Kassem has also conducted fact-finding missions in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and Yemen.