This summer, Professor of Clinical Law Deborah Archer became co-director of NYU Law’s Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program. Founded in 1958, the program provides fellowships, alumni mentorship, and internships to third-year JD students committed to addressing current issues in civil rights and liberties.
“The Hays Program is really important in the conversation about NYU School of Law being a leader in teaching and preparing the civil liberties and civil rights lawyers of the future,” says Archer, who is faculty co-director of NYU Law’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law and director of the Civil Rights Clinic and who also became president of the board of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in February. “As someone who is not only committed to civil rights and civil liberties as an advocate, but who is also committed to helping ensure that the next generation of advocates have the tools and knowledge they need to join the fight for social justice, I'm really excited to be a part of this program at NYU,” she says.
Students in the program, who are called Hays Fellows, work on one or more projects with supervising lawyers at public interest organizations and participate in a seminar in which they discuss their work with the directors and other fellows. Recent projects have included working to provide free representation to detained immigrants in New York City, researching legislative proposals to help app-based drivers in New York City collectively bargain over wages and working conditions, and helping with asylum applications for LGBTQ youth whose gender identities have made returning to their native countries unsafe.
Archer joins Hays co-directors Helen Hershkoff, Herbert M. and Svetlana Wachtell Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties, and Sylvia Law ’68, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Medicine, and Psychiatry Emerita, who is a former Hays Fellow. The co-directors teach the Hays Program Seminar, organize talks and lectures with alumni and other leaders in civil liberties, and help connect students to internships, among their other responsibilities.
“Deborah is, of course, a teacher and a scholar, but also a great civil rights and civil liberties activist, who is very embedded in many communities of work in that area,” says Law. “We’re so fortunate that she’s coming on.”
Archer’s position as ACLU board president “carries on an important tradition for the Hays Program,” says Hershkoff, recalling that Norman Dorsen, Frederick I. and Grace A. Stokes Professor of Law, served as ACLU president from 1976 until 1991, and co-directed the Hays Program from 1961 until shortly before his death in 2017. Hershkoff herself served as an associate legal director of the ACLU before joining the NYU Law faculty in 1995. “The Hays Program—one of the nation's premier civil liberties programs within law schools—has this link with [the ACLU]—one of the country’s premier civil rights and civil liberties organizations—that I feel proud to continue,” says Archer.
“Hays Fellows also have helped launch new organizations dedicated to civil liberties and civil rights, including, for example, the New Economy Project and National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and have become judges and law professors, as well as public interest lawyers, community organizers, and social entrepreneurs,” Hershkoff says.
Archer notes that recent events, such as the murder of George Floyd by a police officer and the immigration ban on predominantly Muslim countries that was put in place by the Trump administration, sparked important conversations about civil rights in the United States. “Now seems like a real window of opportunity to change the way that we think about and advance social justice,” Archer says. “We’ve started a conversation. And I think it’s time to expand that conversation and figure out ways to turn that into action and real concrete change for people. If you look at the Hays Program alumni, these are people already involved in that fight. I look forward to learning from them and helping to train the next generation of passionate advocates.”
Posted August 31, 2021