Mark Schlakman, J. D.

Mark R. Schlakman, Esq., serves as senior program director for The Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. During his tenure at FSU he has served as coordinator for CAHR’s Human Rights & National Security in the 21st Century lecture series and as principal investigator for both the Center's Liberty in the Balance, and ABA Death Penalty Assessment projects.

Prior to joining CAHR in 2002, Mr. Schlakman held several senior positions in state and federal government, including assistant general counsel to Florida Governor Lawton Chiles and subsequently special counsel on Florida immigration issues. He later served as senior advisor to the White House Special Envoy to the Americas during the latter stages of the Clinton administration, and as a foreign affairs officer within the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the outset of the George W. Bush administration when he also served as interim foreign policy advisor to the four-star Commander of the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). He returned to Florida by way of Naval Air Station Key West where he served as a special advisor to the Director of Joint Interagency Task Force South (by position a U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral) which conducts international, intelligence-driven, counter-illicit trafficking operations generally optimized toward counterdrug operations. 

Mr. Schlakman currently chairs Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil’S Citizen Advisory Council, and previously served as board chair for The Innocence Project of Florida - a not-for-profit organization that advocates for the exoneration of wrongfully convicted individuals based largely upon DNA and other forensic evidence.

He earned his B.A. from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL, graduating magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi; and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he served as president of the Student Bar Association. Following law school, he completed Harvard University's Kennedy School post-graduate Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government in Cambridge, MA.

Mr. Schlakman currently teaches a range of interdisciplinary courses involving human rights and national security. He is a periodic speaker, and contributor, to Florida and national newspapers, and a guest on/through various news platforms.