Kareem Crayton

Kareem Crayton is vice president of the Brennan Center’s Washington, DC, office, where he manages the center’s affairs inside the Beltway and leads programs that include a new organization-wide project focused on the American South.

An established scholar on the intersection of law, politics, and race, Crayton has served on law and political science faculties across the country and authored more than two dozen publications that explore the connections between race and politics in representative institutions. The substantive architect of a first-generation video game about redistricting, Crayton is also a digital content creator who integrates the theoretical and practical aspects of civic participation to engage the broader public.

As counsel and advisor, Crayton has represented advocacy groups and public officials, including the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific Islander Caucuses. He served as chief of staff and special counsel to the Alabama House minority leader during a special session on redistricting. During the 2020 redistricting cycle, he advised nearly a dozen local jurisdictions, commissions, and legislative caucuses. He previously served as executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, where he hired and trained a litigation team to argue in two key gerrymandering cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Crayton is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and holds a law degree and a doctorate in political science from Stanford University. He served as a law clerk to Judge Harry Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and as a foreign law clerk to Justice Sandile Ngcobo of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.