Anthony Romero

From Philosopedia

Anthony Romero (9 July 1965 - )

Romero, the son of Coralie and Demetrio Romero, was born in New York City and raised in its Borough of the Bronx.

In 1987, he graduated from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and received a graduate degree from Stanford University Law School. He was a Dinkelspiel Scholar at Stanford University, a Cane Scholar at Princeton, and a National Hispanic Scholar at both institutions.

In September 2001, a week before the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center, Romero became executive director, the first openly gay man and the first Hispanic director of the civil liberties institution.

An American Civil Liberties Union biography cites his having co-authored with Dina Temple-Raston

• In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror, which takes a critical look at civil liberties in this country at a time when constitutional freedoms are in peril. Using the stories of real Americans on the frontlines of the fight for civil liberties, In Defense of Our America takes readers behind the scenes of some of the most important civil liberties cases in America to illustrate the dangerous erosion of the Bill of Rights in the age of terror.

An atheist, he was named one of Time's "25 Most Influential Hispanics," a champion of civil rights.

(See a Nation 18 January 2007 article in which some in the ACLU have tried to unseat Romer.)