Ehsan Zaffar is a civil rights advocate, educator and policymaker and the founder of the Los Angeles Mobile Legal Aid Clinic (LAMLAC), which helped to pioneer the delivery of mobile legal care to vulnerable populations in California and across the nation.
Zaffar primarily studies the disparate impact of national and homeland security laws and policies on protected classes and other minority communities with a particular emphasis on Establishment Clause and First Amendment (religious freedom) limitations surrounding security, privacy, and law enforcement. He serves as Senior Advisor on civil rights at the United States Department of Homeland Security. He is a member of the faculty at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management and the Washington College of Law at American University and author of Understanding Homeland Security: Foundations of Security Policy.
In 2016, he joined General (Ret.) David Petraeus as a member of the board of Team Rubicon. Zaffar is a Council Member of Chatham House at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is the recipient of the U.S. State Department's Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary's Award for Excellence.