The John and Terry Levin for Public Interest and Public Service Law Visiting Public Interest Practitioner Series
About the Visiting Public Interest Practitioner Program
Each academic quarter, the Levin Center hosts a celebrated public interest practitioner in order to expose students to a broad array of cutting edge topics and legal strategies, as well as provide opportunities to build relationships with attorneys and other public interest practitioners making outsized impacts in their fields. Practitioners spend three days in residence at Stanford Law School. In addition to offering remarks on their careers and reflections, Visiting Public Interest Practitioners visit classes, provide student mentoring, and meet with student organizations.
Spring 2025 Visiting Public Interest Practitioner
Ashwini K.P.
UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance
April 20, 2025 – April 24, 2025
Welcome Reception
Sunday, April 20, 2025
2:00 – 4:00 PM
Treehouse at Stanford
Open to Stanford students, faculty, staff, and SLS alumni. RSVP required by April 16.
Community Address
Monday, April 21, 2025
12:45 – 2:00 PM
Crown Building, Room 190
Open to Stanford students, faculty, and staff and SLS alumni. RSVP required by April 16.
Student Meetings and Class Visits
April 22 – 24, 2025
Student meetings by appointment. Please contact Kevin Lo.
Ms. Ashwini K.P. is the sixth UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. She was appointed by the Human Rights Council in October 2022 and took up her functions as Special Rapporteur on November 1, 2022. Ms. Ashwini K.P. served as an assistant professor in Political Science in India. As part of her research and activism, she has focused on policies related to marginalized communities like Dalit and indigenous communities in India. She has primarily concentrated on social exclusion, particularly race and descent based discrimination in international human right framework. Ms. Ashwini K.P. has represented Indian Dalit women in various civil society groups helping them in strategizing on how to ensure that women from marginalized communities are empowered and are in decision-making roles in activism and mainstream social movements. Ms. Ashwini K.P. has previously worked as a Senior Campaigner on Business and Human Rights with Amnesty International India. Ms. Ashwini K.P. earned her MPhil and Ph.D. in South Asian Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Winter 2025 Visiting Public Interest Practitioner
Amanda Alexander
Founder and Former Executive Director of Detroit Justice Center
February 10 – 12, 2025
Community Address: Movement Lawyering and Radical Imagination
Monday, February 10, 2025
12:45 – 2:00 PM
Crown Building, Room 190
Open to Stanford students, faculty, and staff and SLS alumni. RSVP required by February 7.
Welcome Reception
Monday, February 10, 2025
4:00 – 5:00 PM
Crown Building, Room 270
Open to Stanford students, faculty, staff, and SLS alumni. RSVP required by February 7.
Student Meetings and Class Visits
February 10 – 12, 2025
Student meetings by appointment. Schedule here.
As a racial justice lawyer, historian, and organizer, Amanda Alexander has dedicated her career to building the power of community-based movements for social change. She founded and served as Executive Director of the Detroit Justice Center (DJC), a movement lawyering organization working to create economic opportunities, transform the legal system, and promote equitable and just cities. Since opening its doors in 2018, DJC has provided life-changing legal services to more than 5,000 people, supported the launch of three community land trusts and 14 worker-owned cooperatives, built restorative justice infrastructure, and won policy changes to reduce incarceration and foster community safety.
As a 2013 Soros Justice Fellow, Amanda launched the Prison & Family Justice Project at University of Michigan Law School to provide legal representation to incarcerated parents and advocate for families divided by the prison and foster care systems. She was a 2015-2018 member of the Michigan Society of Fellows, holding appointments in Law and Afro-American & African Studies and teaching law and social movements. Amanda also facilitated the Inside-Out Theory Group at Macomb Prison near Detroit for many years and drove a successful effort to establish an Inside-Out Prison Exchange program at UM-Ann Arbor and local prisons. Amanda has trained hundreds of lawyers and law students in movement lawyering, including as the 2021 Givelber Distinguished Lecturer at Northeastern Law School.
Amanda is a board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights and has served on the national steering committee of Law for Black Lives and the board of the James & Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. In 2019-2020, she served on the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration, appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to develop ambitious and innovative strategies to reduce Michigan’s jail population.
Amanda holds a JD from Yale Law School, a PhD in international and global history from Columbia University, and a BA from Harvard College. Previously she has worked with the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy, the Bronx Defenders, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the Centre for Civil Society in Durban, South Africa. As a Fulbright-Hays Scholar, Amanda conducted research on land, housing, and inclusive cities in South Africa. Her writing has been published in The Globe & Mail, Detroit Free Press, Boston Review, Yale Law & Policy Review, Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Harvard Journal of African-American Public Policy, Boston Globe, Review of African Political Economy, and other publications.
Inaugural Visiting Public Interest Practitioner
Nina Perales
Vice President of Litigation for MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
October 14 – 16, 2024
Inaugural Visiting Public Interest Attorney Nina Perales oversees MALDEF’s litigation docket and supervises the legal staff in offices across the United States. Ms. Perales is best known for her work in voting rights. She tried and argued successfully before the U.S. Supreme Court a challenge to Texas redistricting that resulted in that Court’s first ruling of Latino vote dilution under the Voting Rights Act. She also secured favorable U.S. Supreme Court rulings in challenges to an Arizona voter registration law in 2013 and Texas redistricting in 2018. Ms. Perales has presented more than ten oral arguments to the U.S. Courts of Appeals. She has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress and state legislatures on voting rights and currently serves as an adjunct professor at Harvard Law School where she teaches a course called “Current Topics in Latino Civil Rights.” Ms. Perales earned her undergraduate degree from Brown University and law degree from Columbia University School.
Community Address
Monday, October 14, 2024
12:45 – 2:00 PM
Crown Building, Room 290
Open to the Stanford Community. RSVP required by October 11.
Student Meetings and Class Visits
October 14 – 16, 2024
Student meetings by appointment. Schedule here.
