Karen Musalo

Karen Musalo (@KarenMusalo) is Professor and Chair in International Law at the University of California, Law, San Francisco, where she is founding director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, a premier research, legal advocacy and training institute. Musalo is the principal author of Refugee Law and Policy: An International and Comparative approach and has written numerous articles, book chapters and reports on refugee issues.

Her most current publications examine the linkage between human rights violations and forced migration from El Salvador. Musalo has contributed to the evolving jurisprudence of asylum law not only through her scholarship, but through her litigation over the past 25 years, including as lead counsel in Matter of Kasinga and Matter of R-A- and co-counsel in Matter of A-B- and Matter of A-C-A-A-.

She received her J.D. from UC Berkeley, and in 2012 was the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Lehman College, the same year she received UC Law, San Francisco’s Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching.