Marketing and Communications Intern for the Loeb Center, Marc Garraud ’27, chats with Alumni-in-Residence guest Arthur Ago ’90 to discuss what led him to become the Director of Strategic Litigation and Advocacy at the Southern Poverty Law Center, what success looks like in his work, and advice he has for students interested in careers in justice, service, or public interest work.
The transcription below has been edited for clarity.
Marc
Welcome back to the On AiR podcast. My name is Marc Garraud, Amherst College class of 2027. And today, I had the privilege of speaking with Arthur Ago class of 1990, a civil rights attorney with nearly three decades of experience, and the current director of Strategic Litigation and Advocacy at the Southern Poverty Law Center. I’m excited to share our conversation with you. I hope you enjoy the talk!
Welcome back to the On AiR podcast. My name is Marc Garraud, class of ’27. And today I have the honor of speaking with our alumni in honor. Arthur Ago, class of 1990 — Arthur, we are so happy to welcome you back to Amherst. Thank you for being here.
Arthur
Thanks so much, Marc. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Marc
Yeah. Before you diving into the nitty gritty, just how does it feel to be back on campus?
Arthur
I really enjoy coming back to visit. I like to see the old buildings. I like to see how much the campus has developed and how much the, sort of modernization of some of the newer buildings, has impacted the school and, it’s always great to see the students. Even though I don’t know the vast majority of students, it’s nice to see them walking around with, their books and their computers and just remember my time here.
Marc
Yeah. For sure. We are going to start simple. We start our podcast with this first question, and it is give us your elevator pitch. Basically, if someone you respected stepped into an elevator with you or a street interviewer came up to you and asked you, what do you do? How would you explain yourself and the work you do?
Arthur
That’s a really good question.I mean, in one sentence, I’m a civil rights lawyer. I’ve become a generalist over time, which means I do a lot of work in different areas of civil rights. There’s lots of different civil rights topics, lots of different lines of work in civil rights. And I have started to do more and more work in different areas. My sort of career is rooted in the criminal legal system. And so I was a public defender for many years and then did civil rights work in the criminal legal space for several years. And now I do, civil rights work in a lot of other areas. The bottom line is I supervise several teams that are subject matter experts in the different types of civil rights work, that they pursue. And, I help them develop a strategic plan and, sort of, guide the litigation that they want to pursue.
Marc
Nice. Thank you so much. Very insightful. I Wanted to take it back to your Amherst days. Thinking about your time here. What experiences or classes helped you influence the direction you took your career? I guess another way to rephrase is like, how did your four years at Amherst College help you take the path that you took after graduating from here?
Arthur
The way that I talk about my undergraduate years is how they have impacted the way I practice law, and I was an English major here at the college. And for me, what is incredibly important is the notion of narrative and the notion of telling the stories of the clients and the communities that we work with, and doing it in ways that are compelling and ways that can affect change. And all of that is rooted in what I studied here, which is how narrative is developed, how narrative is used, and the ways to tease apart certain narratives that don’t make sense. So a lot of what we do as civil rights lawyers is in many ways attack the system as it is right now. What is wrong about it and what and how can you develop a narrative to counter what are assumptions, you know, frankly, incorrect assumptions and bad ways of doing things. And so that is the impact of my time here on the way that I practice law.
Marc
Nice. Thank you for that. Yeah. In your speech, the Asian Alumni Weekend in 2020, you mentioned how your identity really grounds you in the work that you do. And you kind of touched upon it, what you’re talking about right there. But going back to the beginning, what initially pushed you towards fighting for racial injustice and standing up for marginalized communities?
Arthur
It was actually all really rooted in my experiences in graduate school. And so there is this sort of subconscious feeling that I had when I graduated from here that, I was really unable to articulate at the time, that I wanted to work with, communities of color, the Asian-American community, that was those were the interests that I had after I graduated from college, but I just didn’t know how to do it. And I didn’t have the tools that I could use to express myself and articulate a way to pursue this work and so, in graduate school, though, that really sort of grounded me, in what it meant to work with a community to work with individual people and to do so from a racial justice lens.
And I was really lucky because at UCLA, the graduate program there in Asian American Studies was rooted in the ethnic studies movement, which was really working, taking academics outside of the academy and working with the communities that students of color came from. And so, that really sort of opened a whole new horizon, or illuminated a whole new horizon for me in terms of how to do this work and what to pursue. So, that was the source of like, what the roots of my sort of racial justice, you know, goals.
Marc
What does — knowing the work you do, it takes kind of a while. What does success look like in your work? Like what? Obviously you’re working on people towards, looking at the legislation, seeing what you can fix but like what does success actually look like within your work?
Arthur
When you can change the way that things have been happening and that you can impact, you can have a tangible impact on people’s lives. Across, a large segment of the population, that’s what success feels like. And so there’s, the real challenge is finding the problem and finding out the solution that will impact as many people as possible. And, that’s what success really looks like. There’s different ways to approach doing legal work. And one of the ways is impact litigation and impact litigation, really, is what it sounds like, which is finding a case that will positively change as many lives as possible. So one of the examples I always use is Loving versus Virginia, which is the case, the Supreme Court case that, effectively outlawed, anti-miscegenation practices, which means interracial marriage, Right? And so laws that outlawed interracial marriage were unconstitutional after Loving versus Virginia. That case is rooted in the experiences of a single married couple in Virginia. And the representation by the ACLU of that married couple changed, you know, the way that people have relationships in this country for the last 60 years.
And so you can find those small cases that make that type of impact and that’s the sort of goal is finding that case that will impact people, all the while making sure that you stay focused on the work that you do. Right? So like, you can’t do every case all the time in all areas of the law; So you just have to try to become more expert in certain areas and finding that fact pattern, finding that case that will help people.
Marc
Thanks. Thank you for that. Staying on that topic, right now, I would say I think a lot of people would agree with me that the country feels more divided than ever socially, politically, racially, given that climate. What issues in your work kind of feel more urgent in this moment of, you know, divide in our country? And how do you think strategic litigation could make an impact in this type of environment?
Arthur
That’s a really good question. The real focus right now is ensuring that civil rights work perseveres. A lot of that work was housed in the federal government. So you have agencies like the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, other governmental agencies that had their own Office of Civil rights, and they pursued litigation, and policy change, in their specific offices —I’m sorry, through their specific offices that affected people. So like, for example, the Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, what they would do is investigate allegations of civil rights violations in schools around the country. Those two specific departments and other departments that I’ve mentioned have dissolved a lot of their programs and a lot of their divisions and sections that work on civil rights around the country.
And so what we are trying to do now and a lot of other organizations are trying to do now, is fill that void where the federal government took responsibility for civil rights enforcement. Now it’s up to nonprofit organizations to do that. And it sort of doubles our work. And so that is what is difficult right now. As far as, you know, the country being divided, you know, I have to say that it’s always been kind of divided.
Marc
Definitely.
Arthur
You know there’s this expression, you sort of laugh because otherwise you would cry. But there’s an expression that, one of my colleagues or, a sentence that one of my colleagues says all the time is everybody’s talking about how the world is on fire… The South has been on fire. And so, you know, and so it’s an experience that unfortunately for a lot of communities of color and in particular, the black community in the South, this experience of “wow, we’re under siege” is an experience that is unfortunately an enduring one. Right. For those communities. So it is making sure that we continue and redouble efforts to work on their behalf. If things haven’t changed, they’ve gone a little bit harder, but they haven’t changed in terms of what still needs to be done right.
Marc
Wow.
Arthur
So it’s, you know, it’s a little bit on a certain level, it’s a little bit depressing. But on another level, it gives you energy to maintain that. Right?
Marc
Right, rightfully so. To close out— for students here who care about justice, service or public interest work, what’s some advice you wish someone had given you when you were at that age, in your undergraduate years trying to figure things out?
Arthur
Yeah, it’s advice that might be unsatisfying for a lot of students, but it is what keeps you energized, which is find your passion. And so for those folks who are interested in law school and want to pursue a career in law, it’s really difficult to graduate from this school and then to go to law school and graduate from law school burdened by a lot of debt. And I get it. And lots of people understand it. And there’s a real temptation for people to go into, big law and, to go into, private practice to try to work down that debt. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But also really consider working in areas of the law that don’t pay as much, because it provides people with, not only the opportunity to affect change, but also provides folks with the ability to draw energy from something that they’re passionate about.
So it really is finding your passion and pursuing that to the best of your ability, understanding, of course, your individual circumstances and the debt that you carry. But you know, you do that and you’ll be a happy person.
Marc
All right. Thank you so much, Arthur Ago, class of 1990. It was a pleasure talking to you, interviewing you. And, Yeah, I appreciate you for taking time to speak with me.
Arthur
Thanks so much, Marc. I appreciate it
Marc
Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Arthur Ago. Stay tuned for our next episode of On AiR, where we’ll continue exploring inspiring career journeys and creative paths. See y’all next time!
