Lindsay M. Harris

Lindsay M. Harris is a Professor of Law, Dean’s Circle Scholar, and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Professor Harris’s clinic leads a multi-year international human rights campaign on behalf of Kenyan migrant domestic workers who have suffered serious physical and psychological harm under Saudi Arabia’s Kafala sponsorship system. The clinic also conducts field research on freedom of movement in Kakuma Refugee Camp and advocates for Afghan women’s rights activists in exile through UN Special Procedures.

Before joining USF, Professor Harris served as Associate Dean of Clinical and Experiential Programs at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, where she directed the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic. She has also taught at American University, Georgetown Law, and George Mason. Previously, she worked at the American Immigration Council focused on ending family detention, led the African Women’s Empowerment Project at the Tahirih Justice Center as an Equal Justice Works fellow and later staff attorney, and clerked on the Ninth Circuit for Judge Harry Pregerson.

Professor Harris writes on asylum law, clinical pedagogy, and secondary trauma and burnout among immigration lawyers. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Bloomberg, The Hill, and Ms. Magazine, among other outlets. She co-edited How to Account for Trauma and Emotions in Law Teaching (with Mallika Kaur) and is co-author of the sixth edition of Refugee Law and Policy: A Comparative and International Approach (Carolina Academic Press, 2025). With Professor Laila L. Hlass, she co-directed and co-wrote the Learning Legal Interviewing and Language Access Film Project, a series of instructional videos used in clinical legal education. Her scholarship has been published in the Wake Forest Law Review, the Utah Law Review, the Loyola Law Review, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the Clinical Law Review, and the San Diego Law Review, among others. In 2020, she received the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award, and in 2024, USF’s Provost’s Award for Innovation in Global Education.

She holds a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley School of Law, an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center, and a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego.