Susan Gzesh

Susan Gzesh is a senior instructional professor in the College, appointed in 2001 after two decades practicing law and teaching as a part-time Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Her research interests include the inter-relationship between human rights and migration policy, the domestic application of international human rights norms, and Mexico-U.S. relations. Gzesh also teaches courses on contemporary issues in human rights, the human rights of aliens and citizens, human rights in Mexico and the use of international human rights norms in the United States. In addition to teaching, she serves on the faculty committee of the Center for Latin American Studies.

Gzesh is a non-resident fellow of the Washington D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute and a member of MPI’s Mexico-U.S. Migration Study Group. She is an attorney and has served as legal advisor to the Mexican Foreign Ministry on U.S. immigration policy and the rights of Mexican migrants in the U.S. She maintains contacts with a wide range of immigrant defense organizations in the U.S., Mexico and Central America and has written on the history of U.S. migration policy in the region and the human rights of migrants. Gzesh is fluent in Spanish and speaks on current U.S. immigration policy to media and before academic and civil society audiences in the U.S. and abroad.