Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney, author, and activist and an Assistant Professor at at Rutgers University, New Brunswick in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice. Her research interests include human rights law, humanitarian law, national security law, refugee law, social justice, and critical race theory.
Noura is the author of the book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). She is a Co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya, an electronic magazine on the Middle East that combines scholarly expertise and local knowledge. Her writings appear in numerous publications including The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Hill, Foreign Policy, Jezebel, among many others.
Noura has appeared on CBS News, CNN International with Becky Anderson, CNN with Don Lemon, MSNBC’s "All In With Chris Hayes," "Ronan Farrow Daily," Fox’s “The O’ Reilly Factor,” NBC’s “Politically Incorrect,” PBS News Hour, NPR, BBC World Service, Democracy Now, and Al-Jazeera America, Arabic, and English.
She served as Legal Counsel for the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives from 2007-2009. Prior to her time on Capitol Hill, Noura received a New Voices Fellowship to work as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation where she helped seed BDS campaigns nationally as well as support the cases brought against two former Israeli officials in U.S. federal courts for alleged war crimes.
She currently serves on the board of the Institute for Policy Studies; on the board of the Arab Studies Institute; is a Policy Advisor to Al-Shabaka; serves of the Editorial Committee of the Journal for Palestine Studies; and is a founding board member of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival. She has helped to initiate and organize several national formations including AMWAJ-Arab Women Arising for Justice and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN).
Noura earned her J.D. and undergraduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley (Phi Beta Kappa) and a LLM in National Security from Georgetown University Law Center (Distinction & Dean’s List). She also completed the Abraham L. Freedman Teaching Fellowship at Temple University, Beasley School of Law. The Washington Peace Center awarded her the 2014 Activist of the Year Award and Harvard Law School International Development Society and Women's Law Association selected her as one of their 2015 honorees of Women Inspiring Change. The Palestinian American Women's Association awarded her the Activist of the Year Award in 2016 and the American Muslims for Palestine awarded her the Al Quds Award for Activism in 2017.
