Ira Gollobin

Gollobin attended the City College of City University of New York (CCNY) in the late 1920s and 1930s where he developed two lifelong interests: Latin and law, and was greatly influenced by one of his professors, the eminent Morris Raphael Cohen. While at CCNY he enrolled in Fordham Law School where he received his LL.B. degree and passed the New York Bar Examination in June 1933.

Gollobin was a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild (1937) where he was a strong force behind their earliest immigration work. He served first as associate counsel from 1936-1966 for the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born (ACPFB) and then as General Counsel from 1967-1982 where his approach to immigration issues had both legal and political dimensions. In 1938, Gollobin met Carol Weiss King, another founding member of the National Lawyers Guild and the lead lawyer for the ACPFB. He assisted the League of American Writers from 1937-1938 to successfully get a number of anti-Nazi German writers admitted to the United States and from 1938 through 1940 helped refugees from the Spanish Civil War. Gollobin was counsel to the Transport Workers Union of America (1939–1940) thereby securing citizenship for almost 1,500 subway workers. He continued citizenship matters for the Greater New York Industrial Union Council (CIO) from 1940-1942.

Drafted into the U.S. Army in November 1942 as a Staff Sergeant, Gollobin was assigned to the Judge Advocate General Staff Section in the Philippines. In January 1946 he was one of the principal organizers of a GI demobilization demonstration movement in Manila and was honorably discharged in March, 1946.[1][2]

In 1946, Gollobin represented the National Lawyers Guild-NYC Chapter at the United Nations (1946) and took courses in International Law taught at Columbia Law School by Professor Philip Jessup who went on to serve at the State Department and sit on the International Court of Justice at the Hague.

In the late 1940s until 1966, Gollobin's practice expanded as the need for legal representation for citizens and non-citizens alike called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC; HUAC) and the Senate International Security Committee.

In 1948 before HUAC, Gollobin provided counsel to Victor Perlo, whom Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers alleged had led (Bentley's "Perlo Group") and partaken in (Chambers's "Ware Group") a communist "apparatus" in Washington made up of Federal officials.[3] (NLG fellow Carol Weiss King represented J. Peters in related hearings.)

In 1960 Gollobin devised a strategy which turned the tables with HUAC as evident in the hearings in April 1964 in Buffalo, NY where witnesses skillfully and relentlessly challenged the legitimacy of the Committee (, Pam Sporn). In 1964 Gollobin fought for 16 years (1951–1967), all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, before victory was achieved in Hong Hai Chew v. Colding [344 U.S. 590, 595 (1953)]. Gollobin's work with progressive organizations continued throughout the McCarthy period, and his interest in Asia, which dated from his years in the Philippines, impelled him to edit and write for the Far East Reporter from 1953-1986. He served on the board of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law for 25 years (), and was a founder of The National Coalition for Haitian Rights. ( Starting in 1972, Gollobin began working with the thousands of Haitian refugees fleeing "Baby Doc" Duvalier's brutal regime, and also collaborated with Father Antoine Adrien and Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua in this effort. ( .)