Professional Affiliation

Human Rights Lawyer; Associate Professor, Practice of Human Rights, Department of Political and International Relations, University of Southern California

Expert Bio

Steve Swerdlow, esq. is a human rights lawyer and Associate Professor of the Practice of Human Rights in the Department of Political and International Relations at the University of Southern California. An expert on the former Soviet region, Swerdlow teaches international human rights law, human rights research and advocacy, and human rights across Eurasia. Swerdlow has been a visiting professor at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Webster University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the Kyiv School of Economics, and the University of San Diego. Swerdlow was Senior Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch from 2010-2019, heading the organization’s work on Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, also founding its Kyrgyzstan field office, and conducting field missions to Azerbaijan, Moldova, Russia, and Kazakhstan. Swerdlow has worked closely on the issue of the Ahiska Meskhetian Turks, working as a legal officer in the U.S. Meskhetian Resettlement Program for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) between 2004-2006. He is the author of key works on the history, culture, identity and human rights of the group, with the most recent article appearing in September 2022 in The Diplomat magazine “Uzbekistan’s Ethnic Minorities: Out of Sight, but Not Out of Mind: Lessons from the Karakalpaks, Tajiks, and Meskhetian Turks,” https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/uzbekistans-ethnic-minorities-out-of-sight-but-not-out-of-mind/. Earlier he also published in the California Law Review, “Understanding Post-Soviet Ethnic Discrimination and the Effective Use of U.S. Refugee Resettlement,” (94 CALIF. L. REV. 1827 (2006)), http://www.jstor.org/pss/20439082. He is also the author of “The Meskhetian Turks: An Introduction to Their History and Culture,” Center for Applied Linguistics (2006), available at: http://www.cal.org/CO/pdffiles/mturks.pdf  and a contributor to a major study on the group entitled “Between Repatriation, Integration and Resettlement,” published by the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI).

Swerdlow was a fellow in the U.S. State Department’s Young Leaders for Public Service program in southern Russia (Krasnodar) and also worked for several years as the Human Rights monitor for the Union of Council for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) for Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Swerdlow practiced law in San Francisco at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, and also served as 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. (Juris Doctor) from the University of California, Berkeley 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. Swerdlow speaks fluent Russian, intermediate Uzbek, and has studied Georgian and Ukrainian.