Elliott Dawes

A 2015 graduate of the Master of Laws (LL.M.) program at Columbia Law School, Elliott Dawes was the Executive Chief Diversity Officer at Baruch College, The City University of New York (CUNY) from 2021 until June 2024. Previously, for nearly five years, from 2016 to 2021, Dawes was the Chief Diversity Officer for Institutional Equity and Inclusion at Empire State College, The State University of New York (SUNY). From 2006 to 2014, Dawes served as the University Director of The City University of New York Black Male Initiative (CUNY BMI). Before his work with CUNY BMI, Dawes was the Assistant Dean for Multicultural Affairs at the Hofstra University School of Law. Dawes graduated from Cornell University in 1988 with a BA in Government and Africana Studies. In 1992, he earned a Juris Doctor degree from the New York University School of Law where he was a Root-Tilden-Snow Scholar, a Center for International Studies Junior Fellow and an editor of the New York University Review of Law and Social Change. After NYU Law, Dawes clerked for two federal judges on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (1992-1994) and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1994-1995). Thereafter, he worked as a litigation associate at a large NYC law firm (1995-1996), and later served as a Trial Attorney in the Educational Opportunities Litigation Section, Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where he worked on a number of higher education cases (1997- 1998). Dawes has also worked as an educator. For five years, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York (1998-2003) and, as a NYC Teaching Fellow, taught social studies classes to students enrolled in a law academy program at a large Brooklyn high school (2003). Dawes is admitted to the New York State Bar, Second Department (1996).