Deborah Alejandra Popowski

2012-2013 Academic Year

Lecturer on Law

Appointments

• Skirball Fellow, Human Rights Program, 2009-2011
• Lecturer on Law, Human Rights Program, 2011
• Clinical Instructor, International Human Rights Clinic, 2011-

Practice Information

Deborah Popowski's work focuses on pursuing accountability for and preventing human rights violations committed as part of U.S. counterterrorism policy and operations. She is co-counsel in Bond et al. v. Ohio State Psychology Board, a suit seeking to compel that board to investigate and charge Larry James, former senior intelligence psychologist at Guantanamo and now Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University. She serves on the Task Force on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centers, convened by the Open Society Institute and Columbia University's Institute for Medicine as a Profession. She is also co-counsel in Ngobe Indigenous Communities and their Members in the Changuinola River, a case against the Panamanian government before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. Additional areas of interest include law and social movements, domestic implementation of international human rights norms, and regional human rights oversight bodies. Before joining the Human Rights Program, Ms. Popowski was a Skirball-Kaufman Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she supported the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative. There, she designed and coordinated When Healers Harm, a campaign to hold accountable physicians and psychologists involved in torture. She also interned with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, the U.N. Committee against Torture, and Justica Global, a Brazilian human rights organization. In addition to her work in the U.S., Brazil, and Europe, Ms. Popowski has worked in Argentina, Angola, and Niger, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer and coordinated the organization's HIV/AIDS program from 2002-2003. She speaks native Spanish, fluent Portuguese, and is proficient in French and Zarma/Djerma.

Additional Information

Ms. Popowski will co-teach (with Mindy Roseman) the clinical seminar Gender and Human Rights in the Fall 2012 term. She will also teach the reading group The "War on Terror" Memoir in the Spring 2013 term.