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Gara LaMarche

Vice President and Director of U.S. Programs
Open Society Institute

Gara LaMarche is Vice President and Director of U.S. Programs for the Open Society Institute, a foundation established by philanthropist George Soros. OSI's U.S. Programs focus on challenges to justice and democracy, including indigent defense and sentencing reform, overincarceration, the challenges faced by returning prisoners, threats to civil liberties, and efforts to erode the independence of the judiciary. Since LaMarche came to OSI in 1996 to launch the U.S. Program, OSI's funding has addressed care of the dying, fair treatment of immigrants, draconian drug laws, access to contraception and abortion, expansion of urban afterschool programs and small high schools, and campaign finance reform, among other issues. Among the OSI initiatives in which LaMarche has played a strong role are its increased support of state and local low-income organizations in response to the 1996 welfare reform bill; its creation of a Baltimore office to provide a comprehensive response to education, economic development and justice needs in the city; its program of fellowships to pair physicians with public interest organizations; and its high school debate and youth media programs, which strengthen and amplify the voices of urban young people of color. Before coming to OSI, LaMarche served as Associate Director of Human Rights Watch and Director of its Free Expression Project (1990-1996), where he helped to build the organization's work in the United States and on lesbian and gay rights, conducted human rights investigations in Egypt, Cuba, Greece and Hungary, and wrote reports on freedom of expression issues in the 1991 Gulf War, Miami's Cuban exile community, and the United Kingdom. He was Director of the Freedom-To-Write Program of PEN American Center from 1988 to 1990, when PEN played a leading role in campaigns to lift Iran's fatwa against Salman Rushdie and challenge restrictions on arts funding in the U.S. From 1976 to 1988, LaMarche served in a variety of positions with the American Civil Liberties Union -- with which he was first associated at 18 as a member of its national Academic Freedom Committee -- including Associate Director of its New York branch (1979-84) and Executive Director of the Texas Civil Liberties Union (1984-88), where he led campaigns to provide adequate representation for death row inmates and oppose discriminatory treatment of persons with AIDS in the early days of the epidemic. In 1988-89, he was a Charles H. Revson Fellow on the Future of the City of New York. LaMarche is the author of one hundred articles on human rights and social justice issues, which have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Texas Observer, and The Wharton Magazine, and is the editor of Speech and Equality: Do We Really Have to Choose? (New York University Press, 1996). LaMarche was an adjunct professor at New School University and The John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He has received awards from the Texas Women's Political Caucus, the Fifth Avenue Committee, Providence House, the Urban Justice Center, and the Center for Community Change. LaMarche serves on the boards of PEN American Center, The Democracy Alliance, The Rockit Fund, Article 19, The Nation Institute, and The White House Project; as a member of the selection committees for the Sundance Documentary Fund and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession's Advocacy Fellows; and on the Board of Governors of the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the Leadership Council of Hispanics in Philanthropy. A Westerly, R.I. native, LaMarche graduated from Columbia College in 1976. His random musings on a variety of subjects can be found at http://garala.typepad.com/garalog/

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