Claris Harboun

Dr. Claris Harboun holds a doctorate in law from McGill University and two LLM degrees from Yale Law School and Tel Aviv University Law Faculty. Dr. Claris Harboun is a feminist and a human and social-economic rights lawyer and scholar. She has an interdisciplinary background in socio-legal, critical race/gender studies, and transnational and global women of color/feminist perspectives, along with her previous career as a human rights lawyer engaged in experiential education and community outreach. Her scholarly work on marginalized minorities of the Global South is deeply informed by 20 years of experience in feminist, anti-racist, and social justice advocacy, founding NGOs. The socio-legal status of racialized minorities, mostly women of color, has been at the center of her work, both academically and practically. She has represented polarized and deeply conflicted minorities, such as Palestinians, Mizrahis, Ethiopians, undocumented immigrants, refugees, and children, in high-profile litigation around issues having to do with gender, sexuality, nationality, religion, race, age, ability, and class. Dr. Claris’s work is situated at the intersection of law, gender, and society, focusing on oppressed groups such as women, particularly in the context of the interconnected rights and institutional barriers to health, housing, land, welfare, and education. She is also the director of the Hillary Clinton Center for Women’s Empowerment at AUI. She has published extensively, and recently published her first book, titled Affirmative Squatting - Mizrahi Women in Israel Correct Past Injustices (December 2021). Dr. Claris is also the recipient of prestigious and highly competitive scholarships and fellowships. She was a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University, a fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar while at McGill University, where she was also a David O’Brien fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.