Speakers

shannon-alwakeel

Shannon Al-Wakeel

Shannon Al-Wakeel is a lawyer and executive director of the Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School, where she advises students on careers in public interest and public service and teaches the course Public Interest Law and Practice. Her career has also encompassed movement lawyering, systemic policy advocacy, and direct legal representation, as well as nonprofit formation and leadership. Shannon was founding executive director of Muslim Justice League (MJL), a Boston-based nonprofit advocating for rights that are threatened in the name of national security, which she launched with three other Muslim women in response to the federal “countering violent extremism” campaign announced in 2014. Her work with MJL expanded free representation for people pressured to speak with FBI and other Joint Terrorism Task Force agents and cultivated resistance to surveillance, coercion, and criminalization of Muslim and other “suspect” communities. Previously, her work as a fellow with Massachusetts Law Reform Institute’s Immigrants Protection Project, and later as state policy director of Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, contributed to the advancement of immigrants’ rights at municipal, state and federal levels. She presently serves on the Board of Directors of Defending Rights and Dissent, an organization working to strengthen participatory democracy by protecting the right to political expression.