Edward W. Said ’57 Memorial Lecture: Exit & Exception

Noura Erakat is professor of Africana studies and criminal justice at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), which received the Palestine Book Award and the bronze medal for the Independent Publishers Book Award in Current Events/Foreign Affairs. In 2023, Noura co-chaired an Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 to Israel, a report documenting how U.S. arms to Israel have been used in violation of U.S. and international law and which was submitted to the White House. She is co-founding editor of Jadaliyya and an editorial board member of the Journal of Palestine Studies as well as of Human Geography. She is a co-founding board member of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival. She has served as legal counsel for a congressional subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as Legal Advocate for the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as national organizer and legal dvocate of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Noura has also produced video documentaries, including “Gaza In Context” and “Black Palestinian Solidarity.” Noura completed a non-resident fellowship of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School as well as a Mahmoud Darwish Visiting Professorship at Brown University.  In 2022, she was selected as a Freedom Fellow by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. In 2025, the University of Ghent awarded the Amnesty International Chair in recognition of her contribution to human rights and scholarship.