William Zabel and the Fight for Human Rights

New School President Bob Kerrey talks with William Zabel about his distinguished legal career, his work as chairman of Human Rights First, and his role in significant human rights cases, including the landmark Supreme Court decision which put an end to race-based bans on marriage.

Bob Kerrey - Bob Kerrey is president of The New School in New York City. For twelve years prior to becoming president of The New School, Bob Kerrey represented the State of Nebraska in the United States Senate. Before that he served as Nebraska's governor for four years. As governor and senator, Bob Kerrey earned a reputation as a man who cares deeply about education and is willing to argue that the global economy places an urgent imperative on the United States to invest more of its resources on education. While emphasizing the need for accountability and performance, Governor and Senator Kerrey fought hard for spending on early childhood, K-12, post-secondary, and vocational education. Bob Kerrey firmly believes that public and private research efforts bring tremendous social and economic benefits. Bob Kerrey became an expert in U.S. intelligence, serving for eight years on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He immersed himself in the details of communication technologies and led the post-Aldrich Ames reforms of the federal intelligence agencies. Bob Kerrey is the author of When I Was A Young Man: A Memoir, published by Harcourt Books (May 2002). He served as a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, currently leads a five year writing challenge sponsored by The National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges, and is co-chair with Newt Gingrich of The National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care.

William Zabel - William Zabel is chairman of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), a nonprofit international human rights organization. He has traveled the globe on Human Rights First's behalf, including a 1986 trip to Chile, where he investigated cases involving those who were disappeared under the Pinochet regime. Zabel was a strong advocate for the creation of the International Criminal Court, and he helped support its growth as an effective forum for bringing human rights violators to justice. Zabel also played a key role in the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, in which the Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute unconstitutional, effectively putting an end to race-based bans on marriage. Two years later, he was the lead lawyer in Weiss v. Gardner, where the Supreme Court held that a loyalty oath then required by Medicare was unconstitutional. Later, he signed the brief in Palmore v. Sidoti, in which the Supreme Court held that a white woman could not be stripped of custody of her child because she married an African American.


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