Michael H. Posner (; born November 19, 1950) is an American lawyer, the Founding Executive Director and later the President of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), the former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) of the United States, currently director for the Center of Business and Human Rights at NYU Stern School of Business, as well as Professor of Business and Society at New York University Stern School of Business, and a board member of the International Service for Human Rights.
Early life and education Posner was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received a B.A. from the University of Michigan. He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall). After graduating, Posner spent a year documenting atrocities committed in Uganda. His work in Geneva with the United Nations and International Commission of Jurists earned him a reputation as a human-rights advocate.Who Run's Government Biography Michael Posner
Human Rights First In 1978, Posner was recruited by Jerome Shestack and James Silkenat to become the founding executive director of the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, a non-profit, nonpartisan international human rights organization with offices in New York and Washington, D.C. that works on a range of domestic and international human rights issues. He focused on refugee protection, advancing a rights-based approach to national security and combating discrimination. The organization was renamed to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and, in 2003, renamed again to Human Rights First. In his role, Posner built the organization from a staff of two, a few volunteers and a budget of $55,000 to its current staff of 60 and an annual budget of almost $9 million.Human Rights First 2007 Annual Report
Torture Victim Protection Act Posner has also focused efforts to strengthen systems of accountability in countries where human rights violations occur, especially for crimes like torture, genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He proposed, drafted, and campaigned for the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), which was adopted by Congress and signed into law in 1992.Testimony Before the U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs, 22 June 1990.
WITNESS Also in 1992, Posner helped musician/activist Peter Gabriel found WITNESS, an organization that uses video and online technologies to shed light on human rights violations around the world. In its first few years, WITNESS was based at Human Rights First. WITNESS has since received numerous awards for their work including, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Humanitarian Award and The New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Award.
Role in the International Justice System and the International Criminal Court (ICC) In 1998, Posner led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted.
McCain Amendment / End Torture Now Campaign Human Rights First launched its End Torture Now campaign in 2004. Posner and Human Rights First led the advocacy efforts in support of the McCain Amendment which bans U.S. soldiers and officials from engaging in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The amendment won broad bipartisan congressional support and was signed into law in December 2005.Michael Posner Human Rights First
Academic career Posner lectured at Columbia Law School between 1984 and 2008. He is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance at NYU's Stern School of Business, in addition to serving as director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at the school. He has also taught at the New York Law School.
In 2019, he delivered the Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professorship Lecture at NYU. In his remarks, he said, "We see growing opportunities for business schools, and the future business leaders we teach, to play key roles in building responsible global supply chains, an investment system that promotes greater economic equality, and well-managed social media platforms that advance democratic discourse."
Human rights advocacy Posner has testified dozens of times before the U.S. Congress on a wide range of human rights topics including the protection of refugees, anti-Semitism, human rights within the business communityTestimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressional Human Rights Caucus, 8 February 2006 and human rights violations in the Philippines,Testimony Before the U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, 18 September 1984 China,Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations, 20 January 1999 Northern Ireland,Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, 24 June 1997 Uganda,Testimony Before the U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Foreign Economic Policy, February 1978 El Salvador and many other countries. He is a frequent public commentator on these and other issues, regularly speaking at conferences and events in the United States and abroad. His opinion essays have appeared in publications including the Boston Globe,"The Rule of Law", Boston Globe, 18 July 2006 Jerusalem Post"A Dangerous Continuum", Jerusalem Post, 26 December 2007 Washington Post,"Another chance for Egypt to commit to transparency", Washington Post, 18 December 2010 The New York Times and Forbes.
NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights Posner is director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and a clinical professor of business and society at Stern School of Business at New York University. It is the first center to focus on human rights as part of a business school. In the summer of 2015, Posner was named the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics & Finance at the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, an endowed chairmanship position.
In April 2014 the center put out a report on the garment industry in Bangladesh, where the catastrophic collapse of a garment factory building killed more than 1,100 people in April 2013. The report cited the common practice of indirect sourcing as a major risk factor in the safety of garment factories. The center has published three subsequent reports on the garment industry in Bangladesh.
Technology and democracy Led by its deputy director, Paul M. Barrett, the center has published a number of in-depth reports on technology policy and social media's impacts on politics in the United States and abroad. Its first report on this topic, "Harmful Content: The Role of Internet Platform Companies in Fighting Terrorist Incitement and Politically Motivated Disinformation," was published in November 2017 and called on social media companies to address the problem of disinformation by enhancing company governance, refining algorithms, and introducing more "friction" to users' experiences.
From July 2018 to September 2019, the center published three reports on online disinformation and its impact on American society and elections, the first dealing with Russian disinformation campaigns; the second with domestically generated disinformation; and the third on the impact of disinformation on the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
In June 2020, the center published "Who Moderates the Social Media Giants? A Call to End Outsourcing," which identifies problems with content moderation practices employed by major social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. These include: lack of sufficient mental health services for moderators, insufficient content moderation in developing countries experiencing ethnic violence fueled by social media, and substandard working conditions for moderators.
In September 2020, the center published "Regulating Social Media: The Fight Over Section 230 — and Beyond", which identifies problems with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—the law that regulates social media content moderation in the U.S.—and makes recommendations for amending the law. Namely, the report calls on Congress to keep Section 230 in place, while amending it to make its liability protection contingent on greater transparency and reporting from social media firms. It also recommends establishing a new federal agency to oversee and enforce Section 230 as amended.
In February 2021, the center published "False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives," which found that major social media platforms do not systemically suppress conservative users' voices online. On the contrary, it found that conservative users often gain from online platforms' algorithmic content amplification schemes.
In September 2021, the center published "Fueling the Fire: How Social Media Intensifies U.S. Political Polarization—And What Can Be Done About It," which found that major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube drive partisan political polarization in the United States. It recommends that the social media companies, the Biden administration, and the US Congress take several steps to reverse online-driven polarization.
Human rights in international supply chains During Posner's tenure, the center has studied the treatment of migrant workers in the construction industry in Persian Gulf region, including practices like charging workers exorbitant recruitment fees, employers withholding workers' passports, mandatory overtime and crowded dormitories. This has been an ongoing human rights concern for construction projects like the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and NYU's portal campus NYU Abu Dhabi.
In May 2019, the center released a report entitled "Made in Ethiopia: Challenges in the Garment Industry's New Frontier," which identified worker abuses in Ethiopia's growing garment manufacturing sector, including the lowest wages paid in any garment-producing country. For the report, the center's deputy director, Paul Barrett, traveled to the Hawassa Industrial Park in Awassa, Ethiopia, documenting conditions on the ground. The report's publication contributed to the Ethiopian government's announcement in 2019 that it would review the country's wage policies in the sector.
In September 2020, Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, director of Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights and the research director at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, produced a report entitled "Making Mining Safe and Fair: Artisanal Cobalt Extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," published by the World Economic Forum. The report recommends "formalizing" cobalt-mining processes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's artisanal and small-scale mines—from which significant quantities of raw materials are sourced for electric vehicles sold in the West—in order to prevent human rights abuses.
In September 2020, the center released a report by one of its fellows, Isabelle Glimcher, entitled "Purchasing Power: How the U.S. Government Can Use Federal Procurement to Uphold Human Rights." The report recommended best practices for identifying and eliminating unfair labor practices in the supply chains of government contractors doing business with the U.S. federal government.