List of Columbia University People - Notable Alumni and Attendees - Activists

Activists

See also: notable alumni of Columbia Law School (Activism) and Columbia College (Miscellaneous) for a separate listing of more than 50 activists

  • Bella Abzug (LL.M. 1947), social rights activist and a leader of the women's rights movement
  • Anna Baltzer, public speaker and Jewish-American pro-Palestinian activist
  • Mark Barnes (LL.M. 1991), advocate for public healthcare law at the state and national levels, co-founded the first AIDS law clinic
  • Edward Bassett (LL.B. 1886), one of the founding fathers of modern day urban planning
  • Lee Bollinger, advocate for affirmative action, defendant in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger
  • Robert L. Carter (LL.M. 1941), civil rights activist, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund general counsel, in which capacity he argued Brown v. Board of Education II
  • Julius L. Chambers (LL.M. 1964), civil rights leader, attorney, and educator; third President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
  • Felix Cohen (1928), advocate for native American rights, fundamentally shaped federal native American law and policy
  • Roy Cohn (LL.M. 1947), conservative lawyer who became famous during the investigations of Senator Joseph McCarthy into alleged Communists in the U.S. government
  • Robert Cover (J.D. 1968), civil rights and international anti-violence activist, professor at Yale Law School
  • Annie Elizabeth Delany (D.D.S. 1923), dentist and civil rights pioneer; subject, New York Times bestselling oral history, Having Our Say
  • Sarah Louise Delany (B.A. 1920, M.A. 1925), educator and civil rights pioneer; subject, New York Times bestselling oral history, Having Our Say
  • Daniel DeLeon (LL.M. 1878), socialist newspaper editor, politician, trade union organizer; regarded as forefather of idea of revolutionary industrial unionism
  • Albert DeSilver (LL.B. 1913), a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
  • William Dudley Foulke (LL.B. 1871), reformer; principal reformers, New York State and federal civil service systems; early president, American Suffrage Association
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg (LL.B.), women's rights advocate, co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter; co-authored the first law school casebook on sex discrimination; as chief litigator of the ACLU's women's rights project, she argued six(?) cases before the U.S. Supreme Court
  • Jack Greenberg (B.A. 1945, LL.B. 1948), second President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; argued 40 civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
  • Arthur Garfield Hays (LL.B. 1905), civil liberties activist, general counsel for the ACLU, notable trials included Scopes Trial, trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and Scottsboro case
  • Dorothy Height (grad. study), was an American administrator, educator, and social activist; president, National Council of Negro Women for forty years; Presidential Medal of Freedom; Congressional Gold Medal
  • Charles Evans Hughes, one of the co-founders of the National Conference of Christians and Jews to oppose the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Semitism
  • Ben Jealous (B.A.), Rhodes Scholar; president and chief executive officer, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (2008–)
  • Wang Juntao (Ph.D. Pol. Sci., 2006), one of alleged heads of 1989 Tiananmen Square protests
  • Steve Kelly, legal advocate for litigants who could not afford an attorney and for public housing tenants; consumer advocate
  • Rushworth Kidder (Ph.D.), founded the Institute for Global Ethics
  • William Kunstler (LL.B. 1948), civil rights and human rights activist; director, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (1964–1972); co-founded, Center for Constitutional Rights
  • Eugene Lang (M.S. 1940), philanthropist, Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • Charles K. Lexow, first attorney for the Legal Aid Society of New York City; brother of Clarence Lexow (class of 1872)
  • Li Lu (1996), one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests, first student at Columbia to simultaneously receive B.A., M.B.A., and J.D. degrees
  • Meghan McCain (B.A. 2007), blogger and daughter of Arizona senator John McCain
  • Vilma Socorro Martínez, served for almost ten years as president and general counsel of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
  • James Meredith (L.B. 1968), American civil rights movement figure, first African American student at the University of Mississippi
  • Constance Baker Motley (1946), attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (1945–64); Manhattan Borough president (1964–66)
  • Kelly Overton, animal rights activist
  • Antonia Pantoja (M.S. 1954), Presidential Medal of Freedom; educator, social worker, feminist, civil rights leader and founder of ASPIRA
  • Marshall Perlin (LL.B. 1942), civil liberties lawyer, defended Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
  • Anika Rahman (J.D. 1990), president and CEO, Ms. Foundation for Women (2/2011)
  • Paul Rapoport (J.D. 1965), co-founder of the New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center and the Gay Men's Health Crisis
  • Michael Ratner (J.D. 1969), human rights activist on national and international level, current president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (co-founded by William Kunstler in 1969), the National Law Journal named him as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States (2006)
  • Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (B.A. nuclear engineering, 1969), American Sufi imam, author, and activist
  • Isaac Rice, U.S. chess patron
  • Paul Robeson (LL.B. 1923), civil and human rights activist, international social justice activist, writer, Spingarn Medal
  • Theodore Roosevelt, progressive reformer, conservationist, a leader of the Republican Party and the Progressive Party
  • Herbert L. Rosedale (B.A. 1953, LL.M. 1956), one of the foremost anti-cult activist in the United States
  • Menachem Z. Rosensaft (1979), a leader of the Second Generation Movement of children of Jewish survivors
  • Brad R. Roth (LL.M. 1992), social and human rights activist, critic of torture policies in the administration of George W. Bush
  • Charles Ruthenberg (1909), founder of the Communist Party of America (1919)
  • Mikheil Saakashvili (LL.M. 1994), founder and leader of the United National Movement in Georgia (country), leader of the bloodless "Rose Revolution"
  • Alex Safian, co-director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
  • Theodore Shaw, civil rights leader, attorney, and educator; former 5th President and Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
  • Arthur B. Spingarn (A.B. 1897), leader in fight for civil rights for African Americans, third president NAACP
  • Joel Elias Spingarn (A.B. 1895), educator, literary critic, and civil rights activist; second president NAACP; established Spingarn Medal
  • Leon Sullivan (M.A. 1947), Presidential Medal of Freedom; civil rights activist, anti-apartheid activist, long-time GM Board Member, and Baptist Minister
  • Franklin A. Thomas, president of the Ford Foundation (1976–1991)
  • Faye Wattleton (M.S. 1967), president of the Center for the Advancement of Women, National Women's Hall of Fame
  • Judith Vladeck (1947), civil rights advocate, particularly on behalf of women; helped set new legal precedents against sex discrimination and age discrimination
  • Charles Weltner (1950), advocate for racial equality, second individual to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award

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