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Five Questions with Grande Lum, the Former Head of DOJ's Community Relations Service

The most important office at DOJ that you may have never heard of

Joyce Vance

Oct 3

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“In polarizing times constructive dialogue is a must-have.” This is what my friend and former DOJ colleague Grande Lum wrote to me. No one knows this better than he does.

Grande was the Director of DOJ’s Community Relations Service from 2012 to 2016. He was nominated by President Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Currently a professor at Stanford Law School, he focuses on negotiation and mediation. He was also a senior partner in the Rebuild Congress Initiative at the Harvard Negotiation Project. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School.

Grande understands the importance of civil discourse. The Community Relations Service, as you’ll learn in his interview below, was created by Congress to act as peacekeepers when issues, starting with those involved in implementing new civil rights measures in the 1960s, cause tensions to boil over in our communities.

For the last six decades, the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Services (CRS) has played the role of conciliator in high-profile conflicts, including the Selma march, public school desegregation, and working to prevent backlash violence against Arabs, Muslims, and Sikhs after 9/11. They were in Florida after the Trayvon Martin tragedy and in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder, working closely year after year with law enforcement, civil rights groups, government officials, clergy, and many others to prevent violent conflict and, most importantly, to ensure that community members are included in the resolution of disputes that involve them.

In April 2025, there were rumblings that the Trump administration was considering closing the Service. Concerned about that, Grande and I discussed the importance of making people aware of CRS’s work, and decided to do this edition of Five Questions, which we completed before the shut down, and when the idea of doing away with CRS entirely seemed less likely. But, on September 30, 2025, the Trump administration shut it down.

DOJ said the change was designed to “promote efficiencies and effective governance.” It’s hard to overstate how much this one unit contributed to the nation and what its loss will mean.

I worked with CRS in Birmingham after the Alabama legislature passed an anti-immigrant bill and again when a police department in our district was exposed for having officers who belonged to a white supremacist group, as well as many other occasions. In each instance, they engaged across the community, engaging people with a wide variety of views. They brought them together to discuss the issues and devise plans for making progress, which they were exceptionally good at. They did that in communities all across the country until the Trump administration shut them down. The Community Relations Service possesses a lost skill set in community peacemaking that is much needed these days.

“Five Questions” is a feature for paid subscribers, my way of thanking people who are able to support this work so that I can devote the necessary time and resources to it. I appreciate having all of you here. Free subscriptions, with access to my other posts, will always be available. Thank you for reading the newsletter and engaging in the hard but essential work of civil discourse.