Hadar Harris is the Managing Director, Washington at PEN America. She is an award-winning international human rights attorney who has worked for more than two decades on a broad range of human rights issues in more than 25 countries. Prior to joining PEN America, Harris was the executive director of the Student Press Law Center, the nation’s only legal assistance organization devoted exclusively to supporting student news media in their struggle to cover important issues free from censorship. She also served as the executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the innocent and to reform the criminal justice system, and for 13 years, Harris was the executive director of the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law. She started her career as executive director of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus under the leadership of the late Congressman Tom Lantos. She has served on the Boards of Directors of a variety of organizations including Amnesty International USA, the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights, and B’Tselem USA. She is a graduate of Brown University and the UCLA School of Law.
