People

Salma Waheedi is a Lecturer on Law and Executive Director of the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School. She is also Legal Advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the University Network for Human Rights, a Guardrail Advisor at De|Center, a Religion and Public Life Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School, and an Affiliated Faculty of the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Salma is a public interest lawyer and international law expert, with years of experience in litigation and advocacy before international courts, including International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and UN institutions and mechanisms. She leads collaborative research and justice advocacy projects, working with communities and advocates across the Middle East and North Africa on topics of law, gender, technology, international accountability, and corporate responsibility, and advises on questions of human rights and humanitarian law in the contemporary Middle East. At Harvard, she teaches courses on global justice, human rights, gender, comparative law of the Middle East, and Islamic law.

Prior to joining Harvard Law School, Salma practiced in the areas of corporate accountability litigation, anticorruption and trade compliance, UN law, and asylum and refugee law, including at Chicago’s United African Organization, Baker McKenzie LLP, the Transnational Development Clinic at Yale Law School, and the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. She was also awarded visiting fellowships at Harvard’s Islamic Legal Studies Program and Committee on Middle Eastern Studies. Between 2004-2012, she held senior positions at Bahrain’s Economic Development Board and Ministry of Finance, specializing in international trade, economic and social development, business regulatory reform, and institutional reform; engaged in Middle East policy research and analysis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center; and served as a business strategy consultant in the energy sector.

Salma 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 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.