Steve Swerdlow

Human rights lawyer and professor of human rights in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California.
Human rights lawyer and expert on human rights issues in the former Soviet Region. Swerdlow is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Human Rights in the Department of Political Science and Internationals at the University of Southern California. Between 2010 and 2019, Swerdlow was Senior Central Asia researcher in the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch. An attorney with two decades of scholarly and human rights experience researching and advocating on the post-Soviet region, Swerdlow headed Human Rights Watch’s work on Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was the founding director of HRW’s Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan field office, and has been among the first independent human rights workers to conduct extensive fieldwork on the ground inside Uzbekistan since the Uzbek government’s decision to allow human rights organizations back into the country in 2017. He now is a consultant with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Labour Organization, where he conducts trainings to build the capacity of human rights activists and journalists in Central Asia. Earlier Swerdlow was a fellow in the U.S. State Department’s Young Leaders for Public Service program in Russia and worked as a human rights monitor for the Union of Council for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Russia. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Swerdlow practiced law in San Francisco at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Judge Dean Pregerson of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Swerdlow received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law and M.A. in International Affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs with a certificate in Post-Soviet Studies from the Harriman Institute.

Publications