After eight years at Stanford, teaching and directing both the International Human Rights Clinic and the Stanford Human Rights Center, Professor James Cavallaro will leave SLS at the end of the academic year to focus on a nonprofit organization that he launched last year with human rights experts from around the world, SLS announced to the community today. The organization—the University Network for Human Rights—humanrightsnetwork.org—will work with students, faculty, and administrators around the United States and other countries to promote practical engagement in human rights by undergraduates and students of all disciplines. This new work is a continuation of Professor Cavallaro’s focus on interdisciplinary teaching and practice of human rights at Stanford, Harvard, and other institutions of higher learning.

For the past five academic years at Stanford, Professor Cavallaro has worked with undergraduates and graduate students in diverse disciplines at Stanford, while continuing to teach law students. He has built a leading human rights clinic at SLS and mentored many Stanford law and undergraduate students. During that time, Professor Cavallaro also served as a Commissioner and President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the principal intergovernmental human rights body in the Western Hemisphere.

Professor Cavallaro will be joined at the University Network for Human Rights by Ruhan Nagra (SLS ’16), who was most recently a teaching fellow and co-teacher in the Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic with him and who will serve as the founding executive director of the new nonprofit. Professor Cavallaro commented:  “Ruhan was an exceptional clinical instructor and mentor to many Stanford students, and the University Network will benefit a great deal from her leadership and dedication to training and mentoring young people in the practice of human rights.”

Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean Elizabeth Magill called this bittersweet news for Stanford Law School, observing, “Jim Cavallaro has been a tireless advocate for human rights at the Law School and across the University. The experience of working with him has been profoundly transformative for many Stanford students. We will miss his expertise and vision, but we wish him and his colleagues, including our alum Ruhan Nagra, well in this bold and exciting endeavor.”