Academic Freedom in Higher Education Since October 7

                                            Aslı Bâli, Yale Law School

Dr. Aslı Bâli will speak about academic freedom in higher education in light of the events that have unfolded in the Middle East since October 7. Her talk will also address issues related to free speech and constitutional rights at universities, particularly focusing on challenges to open discourse surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Dr. Aslı Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Bali is also the current President of the Middle East Studies Association in North America, the flagship academic institution in the United States specializing on Middle East history and affairs.

Dr. Bâli’s teaching and research interests include public international law — particularly human rights law and the law of the international security order — and comparative constitutional law. She has written on the humanitarian intervention, the roles of race and empire in the interpretation and enforcement of international law, the role of judicial independence in constitutional transitions, federalism and decentralization in the Middle East, and constitutional design in religiously divided societies.

Dr. Bâli received her doctorate in Politics from Princeton University in 2010 and her law degree from Yale. Before joining academia, she worked for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb, where she specialized in international transactions and sovereign representation.