2019 International Postgraduate Fellowships
Nour Haidar ’19 LL.M. Awarded Global Public Service Fellowship at Legal Agenda (Lebanon)
Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees: B.A. in law and politics from the University of London and MSc in law and business with a legal practice diploma from the University of Law, in the United Kingdom
Experience: Solicitor (qualified in England and Wales) trained with Linklaters LLP; Sawa for Development and Aid, legal consultant; The Bronx Defenders, extern; International Refugee Assistance Project, intake volunteer; Columbia Law School Society for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, board member; United Nations Development Programme, intern
Motivation: “There’s a generation of innovative, courageous, and dynamic Arabs pushing against narratives of despair and building spaces for collective empowerment. They are working on everything from music and theatre to law and local politics, everywhere from Beirut to Khartoum. I’m motivated by my peers who are committing their labor to finding new ways of living a meaningful life amid structural chaos.”
Goals: “I’ll be working with Legal Agenda as an associate lawyer and researcher, focusing on freedom of expression at the intersections of privacy and criminal law, as well as researching refugee policy and methods of movement lawyering. My goal is to contribute to dismantling the legal structures that criminalize dissent and deliberately marginalize anyone read as ‘foreign’ in Lebanon. I will be conducting fieldwork, supporting vulnerable clients in court, and contributing to developing new model laws. In the long term, this work will help me look for localized conduits for continued reform, moving beyond centralized state institutions that have failed marginalized populations for generations.”
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The office of Social Justice Initiatives (SJI) guides Columbia Law School students who want to pursue public interest work throughout their academic careers and after graduation. SJI also assists in the process of applying to prestigious postgraduate fellowships. Read about other 2019 international public interest postgraduate fellows.
Published April 26, 2019