The InterDependent

Noura Erakat is a Palestinian attorney and activist. She is currently an adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University and the Legal Advocacy Coordinator for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights. Most recently she served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives. Prior to her time on Capitol Hill, Noura received a New Voices Fellowship to work as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where she helped seed BDS campaigns nationally as well as support the cases brought against two former Israeli officials in U.S. federal courts for alleged war crimes. Prior to attending law school, she helped launch the divestment campaign along with the Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley. Noura holds law and undergraduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. She has worked and studied in Israel and Palestine: she interned at Adalah: The Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; studied at Hebrew University; and volunteered in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the West Bank and Lebanon. She has helped to initiate and organize several national formations including AMWAJArab Women Arising for Justice and the U.S. Palestinian Popular Conference. She currently serves on the Board of Split this Rock and the Trans-Arab Research Institute. Noura has appeared on Fox’s “The O’ Reilly Factor,” NBC’s “Politically Incorrect,” MSNBC, and Al-Jazeera Arabic and English. Her publications include: "Litigating the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Politicization of U.S. Federal Courts" in the Berkeley Law Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law and "Arabiya Made Invisible: Between the Marginalization of Agency and the Silencing of Dissent" in a Syracuse Press anthology. Noura spent the Spring 2010 academic semester in Beirut, Lebanon where she is working with a human rights attorney on a several issues including administrative detention of Iraqi refugees.