Who

Strossen is president of the American Civil Liberties Union. She's the first woman to hold the position.

Backstory

As a 15 year-old at Minnetonka, Minnesota's Hopkins High School, Strossen wrote a letter to the school newspaper's editor, defending a teacher who'd been disciplined for showing slides of the Vietnam War to his class with "pro-peace folk music playing in the background." She's been working on defending individuals' rights ever since. Following Harvard and Harvard Law, she worked as an attorney in Minneapolis for nine years before signing on as a professor at New York Law School. In 1991, she was appointed president of the ACLU although she continues to teach law as well. (She has to—her gig at the ACLU is an unpaid one.) She has since announced plans to step down as president of the organization at the end of 2008.

In print

While Strossen has published hundreds of pieces in educational journals over the years, her two most well-known tomes are Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, which was published in 1994, and her Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, which she co-authored with Ira Glasser and Henry Louis Gates (among others) in 1995.

Drama

Strossen tangled with ACLU executive director Anthony Romero in 2004 when Romero approved a plan to screen the organization's employees against terrorism watch lists so that the group could qualify for federal grants. The move contradicted the ACLU's position that watch lists of any sort interfere with citizens' rights, although the tension between Strossen and Romero has reportedly subsided in the years since.

Off hours

In October 2001, Strossen guest-starred in The Vagina Monologues during its weeklong Washington, D.C. run. Strossen has also done cabaret performances in the city: "I can scarcely carry a tune, but I sing because I have stage presence and chutzpah."

Personal

Strossen is married to Columbia University professor Eli Noam. The couple splits their time between Riverside Drive and Kent Lakes, New York.

No joke

Pot smokers have a friend in Strossen. The advisory board of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, counts her as a member.

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