Muneer I. Ahmad Appointed Clinical Professor of Law

Muneer I. Ahmad, professor of law at American University’s Washington College of Law and a specialist in immigration law and international human rights, will join the Yale Law School faculty on July 1, 2009 as a clinical professor of law.

Professor Ahmad spent the spring 2009 semester at Yale Law School as a visiting clinical professor of law, co-teaching in the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic and consulting in the Immigration Legal Services Clinic. During the fall 2008 semester, he taught immigration law as a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

From July 2004 to April 2007, he served as co-counsel to a Canadian juvenile detained at Guantánamo Bay, providing representation in habeas corpus proceedings in U.S. District Court and in military commission proceedings at Guantánamo Bay. Professor Ahmad’s scholarship examines the intersections of immigration, race, and citizenship in both legal theory and legal practice. He has also written and spoken widely about the impact of the September 11 attacks on Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities.

"Muneer is an extraordinary teacher, a wise and talented lawyer, and a formidable young scholar," said Acting Dean Kate Stith.  "Students revere him, and his brief visit inspired great enthusiasm among the faculty. We are fortunate to welcome to Yale Law School a leading clinical professor of his generation."

Prior to joining the law faculty at American University in 2001, Professor Ahmad was a Skadden Fellow and staff attorney at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles, where he represented low-wage Latino and Asian immigrant garment workers, represented immigrant workers who had been trafficked into the United States, and addressed the impact of welfare reform on immigrant communities. While in Los Angeles, he was also Legal Task Force Chair of the South Asian Network, coordinating the provision of legal referrals and services to low-income immigrants.

He received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Harvard and served as a law clerk to Judge William K. Sessions III in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to the Skadden Fellowship, he was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation Resident Fellowship in the Humanities from California State University to support research on legal strategies to organize and empower women in the garment industries of Los Angeles and Ahmedabad, India. He was awarded the Irving Kaufman Public Interest Fellowship from Harvard Law School as well. He also received the South Asian Network Community Leader Award and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of New York Leadership Award.

He is a commissioner on the District of Columbia Access to Justice Commission. He also serves as board vice president of the Global Workers Justice Alliance and as an advisory board member to the District of Columbia Community Legal Interpreter Project, the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration, and South Asian Americans Leading Together.