News

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin KC (Hons), Regents Professor; Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society; and faculty director of Minnesota Law's Human Rights Center, spoke on a panel this week at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in a virtual hearing on laws regulating religion in Central Asia. 

The Human Rights Center welcomes Nathan Zindikilani and Yuh Esthel Cheah from the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders as non-resident visiting fellows this semester. In August, the Human Rights Center were thrilled to host Nathan and Esthel in residence in Minnesota, where they had the opportunity to gain hands-on professional development and leadership skills, and meet in-person with HRC staff, students, affiliates, and partners.

Minnesota Law graduates Perry Keziah ’25 and Alex Lloyd ’25 have been named to the 2025 class of Justice Fellows by the Immigrant Justice Corps. Chosen for their talent and compassion, Perry and Alex will work with detained immigrants, asylum seekers, families, and children in need of immigration legal services. 

The University of Minnesota Law School is pleased to announce that Ana Pottratz Acosta will join Minnesota Law as a visiting professor during the 2025-26 academic year. She will lead the Immigration & Human Rights Clinic, part of the Law School's James H. Binger Center for New Americans. 

Mohamed Ahmed Shokri Abdelhalim, LL.M. ’25, has received the University of Minnesota President's Student Leadership and Service Award. He was the first international student to join the Environmental and Energy Law Society board, helping to increase the presence of international students in student organizations. Since then, three other student groups have also included international students on their boards for the first time this year.

Minnesota Law student Alex Lloyd ’25 has received the 2025 Bernard P. Becker Law Student Volunteer Award from the Minnesota State Bar Association (MSBA). This award recognizes Lloyd’s unique and outstanding service to the legal profession and community in connection with providing legal services to low-income and vulnerable Minnesotans.

Can you share a bit about your background? Where you’re from, where did you go to undergrad, and where did you work over the summer or where will you work this summer?

Absolutely! I came to Minnesota Law from a town in Northern Arizona called Flagstaff, a mountain town in the high desert. I went to undergrad at the University of Arizona in Tucson. This past summer I worked remotely as a litigation intern for a small nonprofit called Legal Impact for Chickens, where I did animal welfare work.

In November Shokri Abdelhalim (LLM ‘25) attended the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku,Azerbaijan, representing the University of Minnesota with the Institute on the Environment delegation. Shokri is an LLM student from Egypt and joined the Human Rights Center as a Research Fellow on climate change and human rights in September 2024.

The Human Rights Center was thrilled to support Stepan Karamalac's participation at the 17th session of the UN Forum on Minority Issues at the United Nations Office at Geneva, where he represented the Bulgarian/national minority of Moldova. Stepan is a Visiting Fellow with the Human Rights Center and  The Hubert H.