- This event has ended.
Speaker: Sabrineh Ardalan (Clinical Professor, Harvard Law School and Director, Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program)
Following the Second World War, nations recognized the need to establish protections for vulnerable people who were endangered in their home countries, as had occurred on such a vast scale during the Holocaust. The resulting multilateral treaty and its protocols, known as the Refugee Convention (or the 1951 Geneva Convention), defined refugee status and the rights of asylum seekers. Signing the refugee convention created the responsibility for each signatory to safeguard vulnerable individuals and provided the basis for nations to establish systems to manage such cases. Sabrineh Ardalan, a Clinical Professor at Harvard Law School and Director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, explained her work teaching and training law students on the legal processes for seeking asylum and humanitarian protections. Sponsored by the Strassler Center as part of its Especially for Students series, in partnership with the Interdisciplinary Program in Law and Society and the Pre-law Society, her Zoom talk offered a practical overview of legal procedures involved in navigating the immigration system on behalf of clients who have come to the US from around the globe.