Virtual Book Launch — Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialized Boundaries

What role can international law play in confronting the racialised effects of rising fascism?

Join the Institute for Global Law and Policy for the Virtual Launch of Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialized Boundaries (OUP 2026), edited by Mohsen al Attar and Claire Smith.

Tuesday, 28 April | 9:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM GMT | Zoom
Registration: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/rNtBWuOuRGGEYfpzPG2dCA#/registration

The global resurgence of fascist narratives has been propelled by the persistence of racist ideologies and practices. Paralleling historic moments of crisis, power today is being consolidated through racialised violence and subordination. This has manifested through the mainstreaming of racist discourse; the dispensability of non-white life in war and genocide; hostile policies towards migrants and refugees; and the suppression of racial justice initiatives across civil society and academic spaces. The fault-lines in international law, including the racial dynamics embedded in its doctrines, have become increasingly apparent, raising questions about the framework’s silence and complicity in the face of evolving racial injustice(s).

Is there a role for international law in confronting the racialised effects of fascism? How have international legal scholars responded? To answer these questions, we invite you to the Virtual Launch of Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialised Boundaries (OUP, 2026), a collection of chapters that explores the dynamic relationship between race, racism, and international law. Contributors speak to the racialised features that permeate the international law project, and structures central to international law, with a view to interrogating both its potential and its limitations in addressing today’s — and tomorrow’s — challenges.

Speakers and Facilitator

• Mohsen al Attar is a Reader in International Law and Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. His research explores power dynamics in international law and the emergence of alternative universals.
• Dylan Asafo is a Senior Lecturer of Law at the University of Auckland. His research focuses on race and the law, climate justice in the Pacific, constitutional and human rights law, and criminal justice and abolition.
• Christopher Gevers is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. His research interests include Pan-Africanism, Decolonisation, Critical Race Theory, and Third World Approaches to International Law.
• Suraj Girijashanker is a Residential Fellow at the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. His research examines the nexus between race, empire, and law, particularly in relation to migration.
• Darryl Li is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Member of the Law School at the University of Chicago. His work thinks about questions of war, law, migration, empire, and racialisation across the Middle East, South Asia, and the Balkans.
• S. Priya Morley is Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights and a Project Advisor at the Global Justice Clinic, NYU School of Law. She leads academic, advocacy, and policy initiatives at the intersection of racial justice and critical approaches to international human rights, with a particular focus on migration, climate justice, and reparations.