November 12, 2025

Faculty Accomplishments, Fall 2025

Our October faculty digest highlights Southwestern scholars whose work is shaping courts, campuses,  national media, and beyond.

Meera Deo, Andrea Freeman, & Jyoti Nanda

• On October 23-25, Meera, Andrea, and Jyoti attended UCLA’s Critical Race Studies Symposium: Think. Teach. Transform. 25 Years of Critical Race Studies.

• Meera presented on a panel entitled: Beyond Resistance to the War on Higher Ed. Meera discussed ongoing attacks on higher education and shared research stemming from her forthcoming piece, Resisting Overcompliance, to help guide administrators and policymakers on appropriate responses to extralegal mandates.

• Andrea moderated a panel entitled: Praxis at the Table: Student-Led Critical Food Law Education.

• Jyoti led a concurrent session with three colleagues (from Loyola L.A., Northwestern, and Stanford) entitled: Imprisoning Disability: Using CRT and DisCrit to Abolish the Carceral State. In this session, Jyoti discussed how CRT influences her clinical and doctrinal teaching, her writing, and her research, and she explained how DisCrit (which draws heavily on CRT) shapes the way we think about disability as it intersects with law and power.

Ronald Aronovsky

• On October 25, Ronald attended the 18th Annual AALS Alternative Dispute Resolution Works-in-Progress Conference at UC Law San Francisco. As the 2025 Chair-Elect of the AALS ADR Section, Ronald delivered welcoming remarks to Conference attendees, touching on the WIP Conference’s inclusive tradition of welcoming experienced and junior scholars alike to present works-in-progress at all stages of development. Later in the Conference, Ronald presented his own work-in-progress, FAA Section 1: A Pathway for State Regulation of Adhesion Arbitration, which explores the evolution of the Supreme Court's Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) jurisprudence regarding the FAA’s Section 1 exemption for transportation worker arbitration agreements and its preemptive pro-adhesion policy. Ronald shows how this jurisprudence could offer states authority to ban or regulate adhesive arbitration agreements, potentially paving the way for broader reform.

Paul Bateman

• On October 10, Paul spoke at an Opinion Writing Seminar held at The Tribal Court of the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation in Highland, California. Those in attendance included trial and appellate division judges along with members of the tribe's judicial council. Paul’s presentation focused on how to present the court's opinions in an accessible format and style.

Christopher Cameron & Meera Deo

• On October 31, Chris and Meera both spoke as invited panelists at the UC Davis Law Review’s Symposium event: Celebrating Dean Kevin R. Johnson: Honoring a Legacy of Transformative Scholarship and Leadership. This symposium highlighted the many contributions of Dean Kevin R. Johnson, “whose work has had a profound and lasting impact on the intersection of immigration law and race, leadership in legal education, diversity of the legal academy, and the advancement of justice through civil procedure.”  Chris and Meera presented on a panel entitled Transforming the Legal Academy, which also featured remarks from Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jasmine Harris, and Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe.
• Chris gave a presentation entitled: Kevin R. Johnson: First Chicano on the Harvard Law Review.

• Meera presented her forthcoming Article, The Legal Academy: Past, Present, Future, which draws on data from both her first book project (Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia) and the new SELFS Study of law faculty. Meera highlighted unique challenges and opportunities facing the legal academy, while also discussing Kevin’s positive impact.

Chris Cameron

• On October 29, Chris spoke at the event, Celebrating 30 Years of Century Housing, at the Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles. “The evening brought together longtime partners, community leaders, board members, and staff to honor a legacy that began with the Century Freeway Housing Program and continues today through our work financing, building, and operating affordable homes across California.” Chris’s talk was entitled: A Tribute to Judge Harry Pregerson on the 30th Anniversary of Century Housing.
• On October 3, Chris attended the Seattle Labor Law & Arbitration Conference in Seattle, Washington. At the Conference, Chris participated in panel discussions themed around Evidentiary Issues, Discipline & Discharge, and Applying the Rules of Contract Interpretation. Chris also gave a presentation entitled: Contract Interpretation in Labor Arbitration.

Meera Deo

• On September 19, Meera spoke as part of an invite-only gathering jointly sponsored by the AccessLex Institute and AALS in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Access Imperative Convening. Meera presented on a panel entitled Access to Legal Education, organized to advise deans and other university leaders regarding how to navigate ongoing challenges in legal education. Meera’s remarks drew from her forthcoming piece, Resisting Overcompliance, which urges administrators to think beyond the binary (resist versus comply) and instead consider compliance as a spectrum on which we can choose to minimally comply with legal requirements without over-complying out of fear.

Andrea Freeman

• On October 18, Andrea was interviewed by Kelly Spivey for an episode of the New Books Network podcast. The episode is entitled: New Books in Food.
• On October 11, Andrea was interviewed by Amanda Moore for the Diverse Voices Book Review podcast. The episode is entitled: From Trail of Tears to School Lunch: Andrea Freeman on the Politics of Food.
• On October 4, Andrea participated in The 10th Food Law Student Leadership Summit at Harvard Law School. At the Summit, Andrea led a workshop on Food Oppression.

• On October 3, Andrea spoke as a panelist for the Southwestern Law Review’s Symposium event, Food, Justice, and History. The forthcoming Symposium issue features works relating to Andrea’s book, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground.

KJ Greene

• On October 10, KJ was invited by Howard Law School’s Institute for IP and Social Justice to present his ongoing project on copyright law and African American Girl Groups.

Hila Keren

• On October 18, Hila attended the LatCrit 2025 Thirtieth Anniversary Conference in Denver, Colorado, where she presented her work-in-progress, Constitutional Opportunism. In her draft and Conference remarks, Hila identifies “constitutional opportunism” as a troubling phenomenon reflective of the stealth ways in which the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority misuses constitutional doctrine and the procedures of our constitutional order to pursue ideological goals. Hila deploys the recent and severe attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, and the very legitimacy of LGBTQ+ identities, as a case study to demonstrate one of many possible contexts in which conservatives misuse precedent and procedure to achieve ideological ends (with reproductive and environmental justice as two additional likely examples). Hila also discusses proposals for resistance, accounting for the current structure and politics of the Court.

Faisal Kutty

• On October 22, Faisal was quoted in a Newsweek Writers’ Verdicts piece: Who Won the New York Mayoral Debate: Mamdani, Cuomo or Sliwa? Faisal argued that Mamdani won the debate by focusing on affordability, housing, and local issues while maintaining composure and compassion in the face of Islamophobic attacks. Faisal also highlighted Mamdani’s defense of universal human rights and his call for dignity and justice for working New Yorkers.
• On October 15, Faisal was recognized by AcademicInfluence.com for scholarly impact, which ranked him among the world’s top academics in both Law and International Law. AcademicInfluence.com consists of “a team of academics and data scientists working to provide an objective, non-gameable, influence-based ranking for the people, schools, and disciplinary programs that make up higher education.” “In creating our ranking methodology, we engineered an innovative and unbiased ranking technology that employs machine learning to measure the impact of work produced by the world’s top institutions and academics.”
• On October 2, Faisal participated in a debate, published by Newsweek, opposite former Trump senior advisor Steve Cortes: Will the Trump–Netanyahu Gaza Plan Work? Cortes defended President Trump’s and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s proposed Gaza plan as a step toward peace and an example of American realism and restraint, while Faisal countered that the proposal perpetuates injustice by forcing Palestinians—the victims—to "negotiate away" accountability for their persecutors. Faisal further argued that leadership requires a refusal to underwrite policies that violate international law and moral principle, and that genuine peace requires justice, accountability, and self-determination for Palestinians.
• On October 1, Faisal was featured (for the sixteenth consecutive year) in the annual publication: The Muslim 500: The World’s Most Influential Muslims. The report is created by The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, which is an independent research entity affiliated with the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought—an international, non-governmental institute headquartered in Amman, Jordan. The report is also produced in cooperation with the Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. It recognizes individuals for their significant contributions toward the betterment of the global Muslim community, including leadership and impact in North America.

Jyoti Nanda

• On October 5, Jyoti attended the annual Clinical Writers’ Workshop at the New York University School of Law. In a three-hour session, Jyoti workshopped her forthcoming Article, Feminist Theorizing (in Casefile Review): Centering Girls and Gender Expansive Youth Across Juvenile Carceral Systems, with a group of clinical law professors.
• On October 3, Jyoti attended the Bellow Scholars Workshop at Columbia Law School. The Workshop was jointly sponsored by Columbia Law School, the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education, and the AALS Commission on Lawyering in Public Interest. As a 2025-26 Bellow Scholar, Jyoti presented her forthcoming Article, Feminist Theorizing (in Casefile Review): Centering Girls and Gender Expansive Youth Across Juvenile Carceral Systems. During this all-day Workshop, she received thoughtful feedback from discussants and colleagues at UCLA Law, the University of Washington School of Law, and Cornell Law School.

Orly Ravid

• On October 30, Orly virtually participated in Greenlight Women’s Indie Filmmaking Series for an event, Documentary Filmmaking: An Insiders View, focused on the state of documentary financing in the current political climate.
• On October 29, Orly gave a virtual presentation for an MCLE-credit session organized by the National Society of Entertainment Arts & Lawyers (NSEAL). The session was entitled Legal Issues Facing Indie Filmmakers, and Orly participated in discussions centered on SAG-AFTRA, copyright, trademark, financing, right of publicity & defamation issues, and licensing.

• On October 28, Orly served as a juror for Israeli Short Films at the Tel Aviv International LGBTQ+ Film Festival (TLVFest).

Rachel VanLandingham

• On October 30, Rachel was quoted in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, Hegseth is waging war against the laws of war, discussing the creeping authoritarianism exemplified by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s “sophomoric” vision of lethality.
• On October 24, Rachel appeared on PBS Newshour in a segment entitled: U.S. deploys aircraft carrier to Caribbean as strikes on suspected drug boats intensify. In this segment, Rachel discusses the domestic and international illegality of the current military operation in the Caribbean. You can watch the clip here.
• On October 21, Rachel was quoted in a Washington Examiner article entitled: Trump wins a round in legal battle to deploy troops to Portland. In this piece, Rachel offers her legal analysis of a Ninth Circuit panel’s decision to stay a lower court’s TRO that had prevented the President from federalizing National Guard troops and deploying them to Portland.
• On October 20, Rachel was cited in a Modern Diplomacy article, Trump’s Caribbean Drug War Faces Legal Snag as U.S. Frees Surviving Traffickers, regarding two survivors of the Administration’s unlawful military strikes against alleged drug smuggling  boats in the Caribbean and Western Pacific.
• On October 15, Rachel was interviewed for an OPB article entitled: What we know — and don’t know — about troops in Portland. In the article, Rachel was quoted as stating: “In L.A. it was already a stretch.” “Here,” in Oregon, “it’s beyond a stretch.” “There’s simply no facts to support any kind of straight-faced justification or rationale that ICE agents are unable to do their job, and therefore they need military members to come in and help them do their job.”
• On October 13, Rachel was interviewed for and cited in an article published in the Huffington Post entitled: Can The National Guard Detain And Arrest You? Here Are Some Surprising Facts. In this article, Rachel offers her expertise regarding the legal authorities (and lack thereof) of National Guard men and women acting and interacting with civilians in American cities.
• On October 7, Rachel appeared on a leading Australian news channel (ABC News) segment entitled, Why Trump keeps blowing up Venezuelan boats, to discuss the criminality of the U.S. President’s actions.  
• On October 3, Rachel was interviewed for a KUOW/NPR article on the federalization of National Guard troops for deployment to Portland, Oregon: Dueling narratives on Portland protests head to court in National Guard case. In the article, Rachel is quoted: “These are not carte blanche authorities to call up the National Guard and to federalize them and put them under the president’s chain of command based on any reason the president wants to.” Rachel forcefully continues: “We do not have massive riots,” “[w]e don’t have the inability of ICE agents to conduct their immigration enforcement actions. You have some graffiti on the side of immigration buildings. Graffiti — last time I checked — does not prevent ICE agents from performing their duties.”
• On September 18, Rachel served as the Keynote Speaker for the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles at its annual Distinguished Speaker Series. Rachel’s 45-minute remarks were entitled: It’s Awful but is it Lawful? The Unprecedented Militarization of Immigration.
• On September 15, Rachel was quoted in an AlterNet article entitled: Deeply troubling': Military expert warns Trump is unilaterally 'deciding to kill people.’ Rachel expressly characterizes the Trump Administration’s military strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific as “murder.”
• On September 15, Rachel appeared live on CNN to discuss with Jake Tapper the legality of the Trump Administration’s lethal strikes against alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and Pacific. You can watch the clip of the interview here.
• On September 15, Rachel was quoted in a Daily Beast article entitled: Trump Releases Shock Video of New Drug Boat Strike That Killed 3 ‘Terrorists.’ In this piece, Rachel states that, “[t]he lack of transparency by the administration when they’re using lethal force in the American people’s name, in a very unique manner, is deeply troubling.”
• On September 5, Rachel was quoted in the Miami Herald in an article entitled: The U.S. blew up a drug boat in international waters. Was it legal? In the article, Rachel pointedly critiques the Trump Administration’s lethal targeting of alleged drug smugglers outside the bounds of any armed conflict. 
  Later, in an October 3 piece, Trump declares US in ‘armed conflict’ with drug cartels in the Caribbean, the Miami Herald again quoted Rachel: “The president doesn’t just get to say we’re at war . . . [t]his was intentional killing.”