Layli Miller-Muro, founder and executive director of the Tahirih Justice Center, comes to campus at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 23, as part of the College's Perspectives at the Nott Speaker Series.
Her talk, “Ending Violence Against Women: A Global Struggle for Social Transformation,” is sponsored by the President's Office. The talk at the Nott Memorial is free and open to the public.
The Tahirih Justice Center (www.tahirih.org) is a non-profit organization that works to protect immigrant women and girls seeking justice in the United States from gender-based violence. It provides legal and social services and public policy advocacy.
Miller-Muro founded Tahirih in 1997 following her involvement in a high-profile case that set national precedent and revolutionized asylum law in the United States. While a student at the Washington College of Law at the American University, she argued before an immigration judge and helped with the appeal of the case, involving a 17-year-old girl from Togo, Fauziya Kassindja, who sought refuge in the United States from the tribal practice of female genital mutilation.
It was the first case in which the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest appellate immigration tribunal, recognized this gender assault as a basis for asylum.
Miller-Muro and Kassindja's book about the case, Do They Hear You When You Cry? (Delacorte Press, 1998), has been published in 14 different languages.
Miller-Munro used her proceeds from the book to create the Tahirih Justice Center, which is named for a girl who was martyred for her beliefs in 1852. A member of the persecuted Bahá'í Faith, Tahirih traveled throughout Persia, organizing women in towns and empowering them to reject their oppressed status. Denouncing the evils of her day, she declared, “You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.”
Before becoming Tahirih Justice Center's executive director in 2001, Miller-Muro practiced international litigation at Arnold & Porter and was an attorney-advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals. She recently was elected a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The author of numerous articles on immigration law and human rights abuses against women, Miller-Muro lectures frequently at universities and conferences throughout the world. She has appeared as a commentator on a host of national news programs and for the New York Times and Washington Post.
Miller-Muro received her J.D. with honors from the Washington College of Law in 1996. She also earned a masters of arts degree in law and international affairs from American and a B.A. with honors from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.
She has received a number of awards for her work to fight violence against women, including the 2005 Soroptomist Award, 2004 D.C. Bar Association Young Lawyer of the Year Award, 2004 and 2002 Public Leadership Education Network Mentor Award, 2004 Wendy Webster Williams Award of The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, Africa's Children's Fund Award (1999) and Woodrow Wilson Princeton Community Service Award (1990).