Sharmishta "Shami" Chakrabarti, Baroness Chakrabarti, (born 16 June 1969) is a British politician, barrister, and human rights activist. A member of the Labour Party, she served as the director of Liberty, a major advocacy group which promotes civil liberties and human rights, from 2003 to 2016. From 2016 to 2020, she served as Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales. Chakrabarti was born in the London Borough of Harrow, and studied law at the London School of Economics. After graduating, she was called to the Bar and then worked as an in-house legal counsel for the Home Office. When she was the director of Liberty, she campaigned against what Liberty considered "excessive" anti-terror legislation. In this role, she frequently contributed to BBC Radio 4 and various newspapers, and was described in The Times as "probably the most effective public affairs lobbyist of the past 20 years". She was one of the panel members of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards throughout 2011 and 2012. Between 2014 and 2017, she served as Chancellor of the University of Essex. In August 2016, Chakrabarti was made a life peer in the Prime Minister's Resignation Honours. Early life Chakrabarti was born to Bengali Indian parents in the suburb of Kenton in the London Borough of Harrow. Her father, a bookkeeper, has been cited by Chakrabarti as an influence on her gaining an interest in civil liberties. She attended Bentley Wood High School, a girls' comprehensive school, then Harrow Weald Sixth Form College. She was a member of the SDP. Both her parents were educated in Roman Catholic schools in Calcutta, while she herself attended a Baptist Sunday school as a child. In 2007, she broadcast a Lent talk for BBC Radio 4. She studied law at the London School of Economics, at one point acting as a research assistant to Leonard Leigh, who wrote a paper on the British approach to terrorism and extradition; the paper was finally published in 1997. After graduating with an LLB degree in 1991, Chakrabarti was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1994. In 1996, she started working as a barrister for the Home Office. Liberty After working as in-house counsel, Chakrabarti was appointed director of Liberty in 2003. As director, she campaigned against what the pressure group saw as the "excessive" anti-terrorist measures that followed the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, such