Karima Bennoune

Karima Bennoune is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, specializing in public international law, international human rights law, cultural rights, and the intersection of extremism and women's rights. She served as the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2015 to 2021 and was appointed as an expert for the International Criminal Court during the reparations phase of The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, the landmark case concerning the intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites in Mali.

A former legal adviser for Amnesty International, Bennoune has conducted human rights missions across most regions of the world. She addressed the UN Security Council on gender apartheid in Afghanistan in 2023 and was elected Vice President of the American Society of International Law in 2025. Her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here received the 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction, and the TED talk based on it has received more than 1.5 million views. Her academic work has appeared in the American Journal of International Law, the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, the European Journal of International Law, and other leading publications.

Previously, Professor Bennoune held endowed chairs at the University of California Davis School of Law and taught at Rutgers School of Law. She first joined the University of Michigan faculty in 2001, where she received the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching.