Judith Blau is Professor Emerita in the sociology department at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, and was director of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Human Rights Center, which provided programs and services for refugees and immigrants. She served on the board of the North Carolina American Civil Liberties and was president of Sociologists without Borders, an international nongovernment organization, and the Southern Sociological Society. She formerly edited Social Forces, and several of her past publications are about human rights, with others focusing on climate change, architecture, and race.