On Law, Speech, and Watermelons - Featuring Professor Ata Hindi of Tulane University Law School
Room V
1111 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Student protests in campuses across the US in solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians have been some of the largest anti-war protests in history. International mechanisms, including United Nations special rapporteurs, have criticized the campus crackdown on these protests as human rights violations (of opinion and expression, and peaceful assembly and association). These rights have been subject to various prohibitions and limitations/restrictions, and obscured by the public/private dichotomy and other areas of domestic law. As such, domestic law has not adequately reflected international human rights standards. Furthermore, legal discussions surrounding Palestine have been subject to censorship and fear, contributing to attempts at the outright erasure of Palestinian identity. These chilling effects have paved the way for further prohibitions and limitations/restrictions on free speech and academic freedom today.
Ata Hindi is the Murphy Visiting Assistant Professor of Law. He has served as a Research Fellow in International Law at the Birzeit University Institute of Law and as Assistant Editor to the Palestine Yearbook of International Law. He is completing his Ph.D. in Law at Tilburg University on the “Colonial and Imperial Legacies on the Laws of War.” He has spent the large part of his career working on international law and human rights, particularly in the Arab World/Middle East and North Africa.