Title
Honoring and congratulating Deborah Archer for her new position as the first Black president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Body
WHEREAS, Deborah Archer was elected to be the eighth president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on January 30, 2021. She is the first Black president of the ACLU since its founding 101 years ago, and is a nationally recognized expert in civil rights, civil liberties, and racial justice; and
WHEREAS, Archer is a child of Jamaican immigrants, a first-generation citizen of the United States, and a first-generation college student. She is married to New York's former deputy mayor, Richard Beury, and has two sons; and
WHEREAS, Archer graduated with honors from Smith College with a degree in Government in 1993, and received a JD from Yale Law School, where she was awarded the Charles G. Albom prize, in 1996; and
WHEREAS, After graduating from Yale Law School, Archer clerked on the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut from 1996 to 1997. She also worked as a legal fellow for the ACLU from 1997 to 1998, and as assistant council at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1998 to 2000; and
WHEREAS, Archer was a member of the faculty at New York Law School (NYLS) for fifteen years and an associate at the firm Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. She was the first Dean of Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer at NYLS, and led the school's Racial Justice Project and the Impact Center for Public Interest Law, which she co-founded; and
WHEREAS, Archer has been on the ACLU board since 2009, and has been general counsel and a member of the board's executive committee since 2017. She previously served on board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, and the 2018 New York City Charter Revision Commission; and
WHEREAS, In 2018, Archer moved to New York University (NYU), where ...
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