Makau W. Mutua is the Dean of the University at Buffalo Law School, where he is also a SUNY Distinguished Professor and the Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In April 2011, he was appointed to a three-year term by Governor Andrew Cuomo to the New York State Judicial Screening Committee for the Fourth Department. In May 2010, he became a member of the Sigma Pi Phi fraternity, the first Greek-letter society founded by African-American men in the United States. He is also Chairman of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.[1]
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Mutua was born in 1958 in Kenya, the second of seven children. He received secondary education at Kitui High School and Alliance High School. An excellent student throughout his life, he gained attention in other ways while attending the University of Nairobi with his vocal opposition to the national government. He was arrested in May 1981 for his dissent and was only released after fasting in a hunger strike for several days.[2] He eventually found his way to Tanzania where he applied for United Nations refugee status. He earned a Masters in Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, ultimately attending Harvard Law School in 1984. There he earned an LLM in 1985 and an SJD in 1987.
After graduation from Harvard, he worked for White & Case, a New York City law firm, but later pursued his dreams of human rights advocacy with his work at Human Rights First, then known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. In 1991, he returned to Harvard where he became the Associate Director of the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. In 1996, he joined the University at Buffalo Law School faculty. In December 2007, he was appointed Interim Dean at the University at Buffalo Law School and was named the permanent Dean in May 2008.[3]
Mutua is regarded as a leading figure in human rights, and has written several acclaimed works in the field. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Iowa College of Law, the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica, the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, and the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain. In March 2011, Mutua was elected Vice President of the American Society of International Law (ASIL). From 2007-2010, he served on the Executive Council of ASIL, and was Co-Chair of its Annual Meeting in 2000. Mutua is a prominent thinker of the movement known as Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), a critical and reconstructionist approach to international law. He sits on the board of directors of Global Rights, and has consulted extensively for NGOs, United Nations agencies, and governments. He lectures frequently on human rights, international law, and African politics around the world.
In 2003, while on sabbatical in Kenya, he was appointed by the Government of President Mwai Kibaki Chair of the Task Force on the Establishment of a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission which recommended a truth commission for Kenya. He was also a Delegate in 2003 to the Kenya National Constitutional Conference, which produced a contested draft constitution for Kenya. In 2006, he was legal counsel to John Githongo, the former Kenyan anti-corruption czar who exposed the Anglo Leasing scams in the Kibaki Government.
He is a columnist for the Sunday Nation, the leading newspaper in East and Central Africa.