Polikoff Biography

ALEXANDER POLIKOFF

Alexander Polikoff stepped down as Executive Director of BPI in September 1999 (Business and Professional People for the Public Interest), a Chicago-based public interest law and policy center, having held that position for 29 years. He continues to serve on the BPI legal staff, and retains responsibility for BPI's ongoing Gautreaux public housing litigation as lead counsel for the plaintiff class. Before coming to BPI in April 1970, Polikoff was a member of the Chicago law firm of Schiff Hardin & Waite.

He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Chicago (the latter in English language and literature), and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. Polikoff has served as a Director and General Counsel of the Illinois Division of the American Civil Liberties Union, and is a former national ACLU Board Member. In 1976, in recognition of his public service work, Polikoff was names an Honorary Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In 1981 he received the Public Good Award for Outstanding Contributions toward improving the quality of urban life in Chicago. In 1987 he received the Public Interest Law Internship Award for distinguished public service.

For both BPI and ACLU he has carried on litigation in the housing, civil rights and environmental fields, including a successful argument before the United States Supreme Court in the Gautreaux litigation. Polikoff is the author of a number of articles on civil liberties and urban affairs and of Housing the Poor: The Case for Heroism (Ballinger, 1977). Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing, and the Black Ghetto, released on January 2006 is a publication by Northwestern University Press.