Events at HLS
Enforced Disappearances in U.S. Immigration Enforcement
Come eat lunch and hear from Natalie Cadwalader-Schultheis, a human rights and immigration lawyer at Human Rights First who is researching the ways that the U.S. Government uses enforced disappearance as a tool of immigration management. Her talk with focus on the ways that pre-existing and emerging immigration policies, including CBP custody, ICE detentions not properly registered, interdictions at sea, certain CBP in-custody deaths, family separations, pushbacks to Mexico, and transfers to third countries often constitute enforced disappearances under international law. Register here.
Monday, April 21, 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm | WCC; 1015 Classroom
Sponsored by the Women’s Law Association
International Legal Studies Country Experts Coffee Hour
For students studying abroad this summer, join us for a coffee, tea and snack break with classmates who have lived, worked, or studied in your destination country and can share information and advice.
Monday, April 21, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm | Milstein East A
Sponsored by International Legal Studies
AAPI Communities in the Trump Era
Join APALSA and SALSA for a conversation on how the Trump administration is impacting AAPI communities in the realms of immigration, free speech, benefits, and more. Dinner will be served. Register here.
Monday, April 21, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm | WCC; 3013 Room
Sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Law Student Association
Gendering the Eunuch: Talmudic Discourse and Trans/Queer Temporalities
Contrary to some recent claims, there are ample records of gender non-conformity– and individuals who might today be classified as transgender– throughout history. Talmudic discourse of the saris, usually translated as “eunuch,” is one such record. This presentation explores the salient features of the saris that might inform contemporary contestations of gender. Jay Michaelson, Caroline Zelaznik Gruss and Joseph S. Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law will be in conversation with moderator Noah Feldman, Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law.
Tuesday, April 22, 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm | Hauser Hall; 104 Lumbard Classroom
Sponsored by the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
Deportation Law and Practice: A Global Perspective
Join us for an event that brings together a panel of authors of a prospective book on comparative migration law on deportation to explore the experience of deportation law and practice at an international level. Moderated by Professor Gerald Neuman, members of the panel, composed of scholars and practitioners from Australia, China, and France and an upcoming judge of European Court of Human Rights, will share their thoughts and findings in the area.
Tuesday, April 22, 12:15 pm – 1:30 pm | Austin Hall; 111 Classroom- West
The Weaponization of Sexual Violence
Join us for a panel discussion on the use of sexual violence as a means of terror towards women and children in areas of conflict, including Palestine, Sudan, and Tigray.
Tuesday, April 22, 4:30 pm – 7:30 pm | WCC; 2004 Classroom
Sponsored by HLS Justice for Palestine
Harvard International Law Journal Galleys
Please join the International Law Journal for our Spring Volume Galleys! We look forward to celebrating the conclusion of this print cycle, prepare Volume 66(2) for printing, and provide updates about next school year. Dinner will be provided.
Wednesday, April 23, 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm | WCC; 1010 Classroom
Sponsored by the Harvard International Law Journal
The Duty to Prevent and Guarantor Institutions: Theorizing from the Global South
Join us for an engaging event that examines the critical link between a state’s responsibility to prevent human rights violations and the design of its constitutional institutions. Drawing on experiences from the Global South, including Nepal, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, this event will explore Guarantor Institutions, such as Elections Commissions and Human Rights Commissions. Speaker Dinesha Samararatne, Professor at the Department of Public & International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Senior Fellow of the Melbourne Law School, Australia and an independent expert to the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka will be in conversation with Manisha Dissanayake 25’, a lawyer with a focus on human rights and constitutional law practicing in the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Lunch will be provided.
Thursday, April 24, 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm | WCC; 3019 Classroom
Sponsored by the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World and the HLS Human Rights Program
WhatsApp in the World: Disinformation, Encryption and Extreme Speech
BKC is pleased to welcome Fellow and LMU professor Sahana Udupa to discuss the forthcoming edited volume WhatsApp in the World: Disinformation, Encryption and Extreme Speech with Faculty Associate and Harvard professor Gabriella Coleman.The talk will present the key concept of the book— “lived encryptions” — to argue that encryption as a technological feature cannot be taken at its face value or as a central piece of the affordance as it is experienced; rather, it embeds different, often contradictory social and political formations. Register here.
Thursday, April 24,12:30 pm – 1:30 pm | Berkman Klein Multipurpose Room 515
Sponsored by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society
The Stakes and Prospects of Sino-American AI Diplomacy with Bill Drexel
Join the Berkman Klein Center and the AI Safety Student Team for a speaker series on AI governance! Lunch will be provided. Register here.
Friday, April 25, 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm | WCC B010
Sponsored by the Harvard AI Law and Policy Association, the Harvard Artificial Intelligence Law and Policy Association and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society
Around the University
African Studies Workshop with Katilau Mbindyo
In the age of the Anthropocene, ecological crises are sewing destruction in tandem with (or perhaps by causing) social unrest, economic inequity, and political instability. One of the narratives the Akamba rely upon in the Anthropocene is that of the famous muthani (seer) Syokimau. Stories passed down from Akamba elder to Akamba younger recall how Syokimau foresaw and warned of the arrival of British colonialism and its devastating and dismantling influence and impact on the Akamba. Katilau Mbindyo, a Mkamba PhD Candidate in the African and African American Studies Department here at Harvard University, will discuss Akamba hermeneutics (informed by Jacob Olupona’s indigenous hermeneutics) to interpret the Anthropocene epoch across multi-disciplines. A light lunch will be served.
Monday, April 21, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm | CAS Seminar Room
Sponsored by the Harvard University Center for Africa Studies
Partisan Prosecution? Theory and Evidence from Corruption Probes in Argentina
As courts around the world become more active in convicting politicians for corruption, politicians have increasingly responded by appointing partisan judicial actors in the hope of securing judicial protection. Does this strategy lead to partisan bias in corruption investigations? Speaker Guadalupe Tuñón, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public and International Affairs, Princeton University and moderator Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, will address this question by analyzing prosecutorial behavior in all corruption probes filed in Comodoro Py—Argentina’s most prominent federal court circuit—between 2013 and 2023.
Tuesday, April 22, 12:00 pm – 1:20 pm | CGIS South; S216
Sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Economic Conjunctures: Planners, Residents, and Chinese-Led Urban Development in Nairobi
Since the early 2000s, the rise of Chinese businesses in the construction sector of Nairobi has transformed how the city is planned, built, and lived. The talk sets out to examine such urban transformations from the point of view of builders, planners, and residents. Not only does Chinese-led urban development divide the Kenyan urban middle class, but it evidences a multiplicity of interests among Chinese stakeholders. In examining how Chinese entrepreneurs have come to thrive in the real estate market in Nairobi, the paper enlivens the role of transnational economic and temporal conjunctures, which can impact individual and family trajectories in significant ways. Speaker Elisa Tamburo, Harvard University; University of Oxford, and moderator Michael Puett, Harvard University, will discuss these interesting developments.
Tuesday, April 22, 12:00 pm – 1:30pm | CGIS South; S153
Sponsored by the Harvard University Center for Africa Studies and the Harvard University Center for Africa Studies
Conference The Nature of Commodity Frontiers
This conference aims to contribute analyses at the intersections of ecology, race, gender, Indigeneity, and more-than-human life in the historical analysis of commodity frontiers. Our focus is the transformation of the global countryside, in all its diversity and unevenness across time and space. In line with this bottom-up approach, we shift the perspective away from the urban and industrial core regions of the world towards the countryside and agrarian change, and give a central place to ecological limits, local initiatives, resilience, and conflicts as drivers of change. Register here.
Thursday, April 24 to Saturday, April 26 | CGIS South
Sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Culiacán Under Siege: The Social Impacts of a Criminal War
Join speakers Marcos Vizcarra, Revista Espejo, Iliana Padilla Reyes, UNAM, Lucía Mimiaga, Comité de Participación Ciudadana del Sistema Estatal y Municipal Anticorrupción de Sinaloa, and moderator Angélica Durán-Martínez, UMass Lowell, for a discussion of the turf war in Sinaloa, Mexico, between drug trafficking clans and their respective armed factions and allies. The conflict began in Culiacán, the state capital, and surrounding rural communities before extending to other municipalities. This panel of prominent voices from Sinaloan academia and civil society will analyze the causes, dynamics, and consequences of the armed conflict.
Thursday, April 24, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm | CGIS South; S216
Encountering Law: Legal Knowledge and Practice in Chosŏn Korea
Scholars have long assumed that Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) lacked a distinctive system for cultivating legal professionals. Local magistrates and provincial governors, serving as chief judicial officers in their jurisdictions, were scholar-officials appointed through the civil service examination and often perceived as lacking formal legal training. Yet, despite their absence of structured legal education, these officials demonstrated substantial knowledge of the law and significant practical administrative skills in legal matters. Jungwon Kim, King Sejong Associate Professor of Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, will discuss these important historical figures, with moderator Sun Joo Kim, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Korean History.
Thursday, April 24, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm | CGIS South Building; Thomas Chan-Soo Kang Room (S050)
Sponsored by the HLS East Asian Legal Studies and the Korea Institute at HLS
Navigating Democratic Backsliding Series: Session Four
Democratic backsliding has become a growing concern worldwide, affecting countries that were once considered stable democracies. While the process varies across regions, common patterns emerge—executive overreach, judicial capture, restrictions on civil liberties, and weakening democratic institutions. Some societies have successfully resisted backsliding, while others have struggled to contain it. This session will feature Rachel Beatty Riedl, Director of Cornell University’s Center for Global Democracy, presenting findings from the Democratic Attacks and Resistance Events Dataset, which analyzes the effectiveness of different resistance strategies. The session will be moderated by Archon Fung, Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at Harvard. Register here.
Friday, April 25, 9:00 am – 10:00 am | Ash Center; Seminar Room 225
Sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Turkey, Israel, and the Trump Effect on Global Democracy
Join speakers Evren Balta (Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Scholars Program. Professor, Department of International Relations, Özyeğin University), Alper Coşkun, (Senior Fellow, Europe Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Oded Haklai (Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Scholars Program. Full Professor, Department of Political Studies; Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity, Queen’s University), Andrew O’Donohue (Graduate Student Associate; Graduate Research Fellow, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Identity Politics. PhD Candidate, Department of Government, Harvard University), and moderator Lenore Martin (Associate. Professor of Political Science and International Studies, Department of Political Science, Emmanuel College), for a discussion of the Trump administration’s effects on democracy in Turkey, Israel, and beyond.
Friday, April 25, 1:30 pm – 2:45 pm | Adolphus Busch Hall; Hoffman Room
Sponsored by the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, the Graduate Student Initiatives Series and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies 30th Anniversary Symposium
Join us for a day of insightful dialogue as we explore key issues shaping Latin America, including the state of democracy, climate change, and the impact of crime on society. We will also celebrate the region’s creativity, resilience, and innovation with a special focus on entrepreneurship and a keynote from a world-renowned artist, as well as commemorate 30 years of impactful achievements at the DRCLAS. Register here.
Saturday, April 26, 8:30 am – 6:00 pm | Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
Deadlines & Announcements
- All HLS students who are traveling abroad under HLS auspices— for HLS academic credit and/or with Harvard funding— must complete the school’s international travel requirements. The deadline for completing requirements for summer international travel is May 15.