Events

From the Green New Deal to the Vision for Black Lives, today's left social movements are turning to law reform as a way to reimagine our relationships to each other, the state, and the commons. Professor Amna Akbar, Professor of Law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, will discuss the possibilities and limits of these law reform campaigns to transform our thinking about law, law reform, and the work ahead to build a more just society. The program will be moderated by Jayne Huckerby, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC). Sponsored by the IHRC and the Center for International and Comparative Law. Co-sponsored by Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Human Rights Center at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Law Womxn of Color Collective, Human Rights Law Society, and International Law Society. The event is free and open to all; lunch provided. For information, please contact Balfour Smith at bsmith@law.duke.edu.

Amna Akbar

Professor Amna Akbar’s research and teaching focuses on social movements, critical theory, and policing, race, and inequality. Her scholarship explores the intersections of national security and criminal law, and the potential of social movements to transform our thinking about law, law enforcement, and law reform. She writes broadly for academic and popular audiences, in outlets like New York University Law Review; UCLA Law Review; NOMOS; Citizenship Studies; the Journal of Legal Education; Law and Political Economy; The Nation; Boston Review; and others. In her teaching and lawyering work, she is deeply engaged with law and organizing in Ohio and around the country.

Before joining the faculty at Ohio State, Professor Akbar taught at New York University (NYU) Law School and the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School. She received her B.A. from Barnard College, Columbia University, and her J.D. from the University of Michigan, where she served as editor-in-chief of the Michigan Law Review. After law school, she clerked for Judge Gerard E. Lynch in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and worked as a staff attorney at Queens Legal Service Corp. in a community-based battered women’s project.