Karima Bennoune, associate professor of law at the School of Law–Newark, received the Derrick A. Bell Jr. Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. The award, named in honor of the first tenured African-American on the Harvard Law School faculty, recognizes a junior faculty member who – through activism, mentoring, colleagueship, teaching, and scholarship – has made an extraordinary contribution to legal education, the legal system, or social justice. Bennoune’s teaching, research, and advocacy interests are in the areas of human rights, women’s rights, and international law and terrorism. She received a bachelor’s degree in history and semiotics from Brown University and graduated from a joint program in law and Middle Eastern and North African studies at the University of Michigan, earning a J.D. from the law school and her master’s from the Rackham Graduate School in Women’s Studies.
Focus: What led you to your career as a law professor and your focus on international human rights and women’s rights?
Bennoune: One of the most important sources of my interest in human rights was the life experience of my late father, Dr. Mahfoud Bennoune. Born into a large peasant family in Algeria, at the time a French colony, he had no formal education. As a young man, he spent five years as a prisoner-of-war during Algeria’s war of independence, surviving torture by the French Army. After his release, he studied at some of the best universities in the world and, ultimately, became a professor of anthropology at the University of Algiers, where I spent part of my childhood. From him I learned the imperative of engaging with what is happening to others in the society and world around you. I was motivated to work for women’s equality by one my maternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Sutton, who died in November at the age of 101. She earned a master’s degree from Ohio State University during the 1920s and became a teacher. She then had to delay marriage for 10 years because she had a job and her fiancé, my grandfather, did not. As a married woman, she could not have kept her job during the Depression. She remained a teacher off and on for the rest of her life in official and unofficial ways. I was lucky to have her inspiring example of supremely capable womanhood. When I accepted the Bell Award, I dedicated it to the memory of these two brilliant educators, one American and one Arab, who always reminded me not to take my opportunities to learn and to teach for granted.
Focus: As a secularist Arab-American law professor who has been critical of both racist discourses on fundamentalism and the dangers of religious fundamentalism itself, do you find it possible to maintain a sense of idealism in the current global climate?
Bennoune: So many people are dying on the front lines of these conflicts; I feel a strong obligation to be an optimist. What I teach my international law students is both the pessimistic reality that has been created by extremism on all sides as well as a sense of responsibility to think more successfully than our generation has about human rights and conflict resolution.
Focus: You’re are a board member of Amnesty International – USA, have been a consultant to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and have traveled on human rights field missions to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Pakistan, South Korea, southern Thailand, and Tunisia. How do these activities inform your teaching?
Bennoune: For me, scholarship and advocacy are interrelated. I bring what I learn in my practice back into the classroom. My scholarship allows me to reflect on these real world challenges and try to create paradigms which can inform solutions. For example, when I traveled to Afghanistan for Amnesty International in December 2005 to interview former detainees in the war against terrorism, I came back and lectured for Rutgers students as the guest of the Human Rights Forum. On the other hand, my framework for understanding what was happening in Afghanistan was shaped by my academic work in which I have argued for the greater use of human rights standards – and not just the laws of war – to shape concerns about armed conflict.
Focus: Rutgers-Newark law students come from more than 30 countries. What is the effect of such diversity in your international law classes?
Bennoune: Having students whose families are from around the world, who speak multiple languages, and who have traveled overseas greatly enhances all of our discussions. Solving major international problems requires reconciling diverse points of view, conflicting claims, and clashing priorities. Students get a better flavor of this when exposed to a multiplicity of perspectives. This also challenges them to rethink their own assumptions about the world. I find I learn from my students every day.