The lecture this year, Immigration, Race and Rights in the Trump Era: Lessons From the Muslim Ban and DACA Termination, was presented by Muneer I. Ahmad, Clinical Professor of Law and Deputy Dean for Experiential Education at Yale Law School.
Professor Ahmad is Deputy Dean for Experiential Education, a Clinical Professor of Law, and the Director of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School. He co-directs the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC) and teaches courses related to immigration, human rights, and development.
In WIRAC, he and his students represent individuals, groups and organizations in both litigation and non-litigation matters related to immigration, immigrants’ rights, and labor, and intersections among them. The clinic’s recent work has included Darweesh v. Trump, the first lawsuit to challenge the first Muslim Ban executive order, which resulted in the issuance of a nationwide stay within 24 hours of the ban; and Batalla Vidal v. Nielsen, which challenges the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). Professor Ahmad has represented immigrants in a range of labor, immigration, and trafficking cases, and for three years represented a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay; he has written on these and related topics.
His scholarship examines the intersections of immigration, race, and citizenship in both legal theory and legal practice. Recent scholarship includes Beyond Earned Citizenship, 52 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 257 (2017), which critiques the dominant approach to comprehensive immigration reform.
Previously, he was Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. Prior to joining the faculty at American in 2001, he was a Skadden Fellow and staff attorney at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles. He clerked for the Hon. William K. Sessions III in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont.
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Music Credit: LeChuckz