Salma Waheedi

Salma Waheedi is a Lecturer on Law and the Executive Director of the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School. A public interest lawyer and international law expert, she has extensive experience in litigation and advocacy before international and regional courts and United Nations mechanisms and treaty bodies. She leads research and advocacy projects that aim to advance rights-based governance and legal accountability, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Her areas of expertise include Islamic law, gender justice, comparative constitutional law, international human rights and humanitarian law, climate justice, and economic and social rights.

She also serves as Legal Advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the University Network for Human Rights, an Executive Board Member of the Arab Association of Constitutional Law, an affiliated faculty member of the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Guardrail Advisor at De|Center, a nonprofit focused on advancing responsible technology governance and digital rights.

Earlier in her legal career, Waheedi practiced law in the areas of international trade, corporate accountability litigation, regulatory compliance, and immigration and refugee law, including at the United African Organization in Chicago, Baker McKenzie LLP, and the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. She also held academic and legal fellowships with the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, the Religion and Public Life Program at the Harvard Divinity School, the Harvard Islamic Legal Studies Program, the Transnational Development Clinic at Yale Law School, and Better World Foundation in Cairo, Egypt.

From 2004 to 2014, she held senior economic policy positions in her home country of Bahrain at the Economic Development Board and Ministry of Finance, and served as a strategy consultant advising on private sector development, industry policy, energy sector investments, and institutional and regulatory reform.

Waheedi holds a JD from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, an MA in Government and International Law from Georgetown University, an MA in International Affairs with a concentration in Middle East Studies from American University, and a BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is admitted to practice law in New York and Washington, D.C.