Arab Conference at Harvard: Defending Arab and Muslim Rights in an Age of Trump

Date: 

Saturday, November 11, 2017 (All day)

Location: 

Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Panel at the annual Arab Conference at Harvard: [Get your tickets here: http://arabconferenceharvard.com/] Cost: $55-160 The Muslim ban and other Trump administration efforts specifically target and seek to punish Arab and Muslim communities in the US and abroad. This administration poses old and new challenges to be tackled, requiring creative use of the law and effective organizing across marginalized communities. This panel will explore some of the specific challenges that the Trump administration poses and what we can learn from past efforts to use the law to protect Arab and Muslim communities. Hina Shamsi is the director of the ACLU National Security Project, which is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human rights. She engages in litigation, research, and policy advocacy on issues including the freedoms of speech and association, targeted killing, torture, unlawful detention, privacy and surveillance, and discrimination against racial and religious minorities. She previously worked as a staff attorney in the ACLU National Security Project and was the acting director of Human Rights First's Law & Security Program. She also served as senior advisor to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions. Tarek Z. Ismail is the Senior Staff Attorney in the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, which primarily aims to address the legal needs of Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities in the New York City area that are particularly affected by national security and counterterrorism policies and practices deployed by various law enforcement agencies. Khaled A. Beydoun is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, and Senior Affilliated Faculty at the University of California- Berkeley Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project. A Critical Race Theorist, Professor Beydoun’s research examines the legal construction of Arab and Muslim American identity, the foundational and modern development of Islamophobia, and the intersection of national security policy, civil liberties and citizenship. Moderator: Dalia Deak is a second year law student at Harvard Law School. Dalia spent this past summer at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLU of MA), where, among other projects, she helped support the ACLU of MA's response to the Supreme Court's preliminary ruling in the Muslim ban case, Trump v. IRAP.