Academic Freedom in Higher Education - Prof. Asli Ü. Bâli, Yale Law School

Asli Ü. Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is an expert in international human rights law and comparative constitutional law focused on the Middle East. Dr. Bâli received her doctorate in Politics from Princeton University in 2010 and her law degree from Yale. Before her academic career, she worked for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb. Shen then went on to UCLA where she was a founding faculty director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Dr. Bâli’s scholarship spans topics from nuclear non-proliferation to constitutional design in religiously divided societies. She examines how race and empire shape the interpretation and enforcement of international law, while also studying judicial independence in constitutional transitions and federalism in the Middle East. Dr. Bâli currently serves as President of the Middle East Studies Association. She is also on the board of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association and on the editorial board of the American Journal of International Law.

Cosponsored by the Axinn Center for the Humanities, Departments of Anthropology, Middle East Studies, History, Education Studies, GSFS, CCSRE, and the Academic Speaker Supplement Fund.

Abstract: Dr. Bâli will speak about academic freedom in higher education since the events that have unfolded in the Middle East after October 7. She will address issues of free speech and constitutional rights across universities and discuss how the academic climate of open inquiry has been challenged in recent months.