Diala Shamas

Diala Shamas is a Clinical Supervising Attorney and Lecturer in Law at the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic. Prior to joining Stanford Law School, Shamas was a Senior Staff Attorney supervising the CLEAR (Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility) project, based at City University of New York School of Law’s clinical program. CLEAR provides legal services to clients and communities in the New York City area who are targeted by post-9/11 national security and counterterrorism policies and practices. Along with her colleagues and students, Shamas represented individuals who were approached for questioning by local and federal law enforcement, targeted for surveillance, placed on federal watch-lists or who have had immigration benefits withheld on national security grounds. She was on the legal team representing the plaintiffs in Raza v. City of New York, challenging the New York City Police Department’s program of suspicionless surveillance of Muslims and resulting in a historic settlement reforming the Police Department’s practices. She also litigated Tanvir v. Holder, challenging the FBI’s abuse of the No-Fly List to pressure individuals to become informants. Shamas has also worked with B’Tselem, a human rights organization based in Jerusalem, where she developed a human rights documentation initiative in the occupied territories using video documentation tools. Shamas received her undergraduate and law degrees from Yale, where she was an editor for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal. Her advocacy pieces have been published in the New York Times, The Nation, CNN.com and the Washington Post, among others.