People

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 courts, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and United Nations mechanisms and treaty bodies. Her work focuses on advancing accountability, rights-based governance, and legal protections across the Middle East and North Africa. She also serves as Legal Advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the University Network for Human Rights, Guardrail Advisor to De|Center, Executive Board Member of the Arab Association of Constitutional Law, and an affiliated faculty member of the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. At Harvard, she leads research and advocacy on human rights and state responsibility, gender justice, prisoners’ rights, labor rights, and climate justice, and teaches courses on human rights advocacy, Islamic law, gender and the law, Israel-Palestine, and law and society in the Middle East and North Africa.

Prior to joining Harvard Law School, 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, the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and the Transnational Development Clinic at Yale Law School. She also held legal and academic fellowships at the International Human Rights Clinic and the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, the Committee on Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, and the Better World Foundation in Cairo, Egypt. Between 2004–2012, she held senior positions in her home country of Bahrain at the Economic Development Board and Ministry of Finance, conducted Middle East policy research and analysis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Wilson Center, and served as a strategy consultant in the energy sector.

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 Eastern 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.