Steve Zipperstein is an Assistant Adjunct Professor with the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He also teaches for the Global Studies Interdepartmental Program within the UCLA International Institute and for the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. He has been a Distinguished Senior Fellow at CMED for the past five years, and is a Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University Law School and the Hertie School in Berlin. Zipperstein is the author of The Legal Case for Palestine: A Critical Assessment (forthcoming) (Routledge, 2024), Zionism, Palestinian Nationalism and the Law: 1939-1948 (Routledge, 2022), and Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Trials of Palestine (Routledge 2020). He has also authored several peer-reviewed papers and law review articles, and has testified before the United States Congress several times regarding telecommunications and internet policy issues. Zipperstein lectures widely around the world on cybersecurity, advanced technology, and a range of U.S. and Middle East issues.

Before joining UCLA, Zipperstein practiced law for 40 years in California, Washington D.C. and New York/New Jersey. Zipperstein has been elected to the American Law Institute and named a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. During his career, Zipperstein worked as a law firm litigator, a federal prosecutor and Justice Department official, and as the Chief Legal Officer of BlackBerry Ltd. and Verizon Wireless. Zipperstein served as Counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno during the 1995 congressional hearings regarding the events in Waco, Texas, and as Counselor for former Assistant Attorney General Robert Mueller regarding the 1992-93 congressional investigation of the “Iraq-gate” matter. As a federal prosecutor, Zipperstein was the highest-ranking career lawyer in the United States Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, where he tried more than a dozen felony jury cases and argued 23 cases in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.