Faculty Profile (Back to Menu)
Karima Bennoune
Professor of Law and Arthur L. Dickson Scholar
Professor Bennoune graduated from a joint program in law and Middle Eastern and North African studies at the University of Michigan, earning a J.D. cum laude from the law school and an M.A. from the Rackham Graduate School, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. In 1995 she served as a Center for Women’s Global Leadership delegate to the NGO Forum at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. From 1995 until 1999, she was based in London as a legal adviser at Amnesty International. Before coming to Rutgers, Professor Bennoune was a visiting scholar and then visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
Her publications have appeared in many leading academic journals, including the American Journal of International Law, the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, the European Journal of International Law, and the Michigan Journal of International Law. They have been widely cited, including on Slate, in the Nation magazine, the Dallas Morning News, and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and the UN Special Rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism. Her article, “Terror/Torture,” was designated one of the top 10 global security law review articles of 2008 by Oxford University Press. Professor Bennoune’s most recent academic article, “Remembering the Other’s Others: Theorizing the Approach of International Law to Muslim Fundamentalism,” appeared in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. She has lectured around the world, including at Cornell Law School, UC-Berkeley School of Law and the Yale Law School in the U.S., as well as for the UN Department of Political Affairs, the University of London, the London School of Economics, the Feminist Leadership Institute in Senegal, and the Second Istanbul Conference on Democracy and Global Security.
In 2007, Professor Bennoune became the first Arab-American to win the Derrick Bell Award from the Association of American Law Schools Section on Minority Groups. She has served as a member of the executive council of the American Society of International Law and on the board of directors of Amnesty International USA. Currently, she sits on the Council of the Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Bennoune has also been a consultant on human rights issues for the International Council on Human Rights Policy, the Soros Foundation, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, and for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Her human rights field missions have included Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, Lebanon, Pakistan, Niger, South Korea, southern Thailand, and Tunisia. In 2009-2010 she was one of a group of international experts assembled by Leiden University, under the auspices of the Dutch Foreign Ministry, to develop a new set of policy recommendations on counter-terrorism and international law. Karima Bennoune is the 2011 recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award at Rutgers University–Newark.
Currently, Professor Bennoune is completing research for a book entitled A More Courageous Politics: Muslims Confront Fundamentalism, forthcoming from Norton in 2012. She traveled to Algeria in February 2011 to serve as an observer at pro-democracy protests, writing a series of articles about these events for the Guardian. The articles were picked up by the websites of the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and Al Jazeera, among others.