Panel I - Food Sovereignty: Perspectives on Resilience

Smita Narula

Haub Distinguished Professor of International Law & Co-Director of Global Center for Environmental Legal Studies

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Smiita Narula  is the Elisabeth Haub School of Law’s inaugural Haub Distinguished Chair of International Law and Co-Director of the law school’s Global Center for Environmental Legal Studies. Professor Narula teaches International Environmental Law, International Human Rights Law, Environmental Justice, Human Rights and the Environment, and Property. She is author of dozens of widely-cited publications on human rights, food systems, and the environment, and has helped formulate policy, legal, and community-led responses to a range of social justice and ecological issues worldwide. In 2021 she was elected as a Fellow in the American College of Environmental Lawyers. Prior to joining Haub Law School, Professor Narula was Associate Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law. In 2008 she was appointed legal advisor to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and served in this capacity for the duration of the Rapporteur’s six-year mandate. From 1997 to 2003, Professor Narula served as India researcher and Senior Researcher for South Asia at Human Rights Watch, and in 2000, she co-founded the International Dalit Solidarity Network, a transnational advocacy network that helps advance the right to equality for 260 million people affected by caste-based discrimination worldwide.

Trevor Findley

Clinical Instructor

Food Law and Policy Clinic, Harvard Law School

Trevor joined the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic in January 2022 as a Clinical Instructor.  Prior to joining FLPC, he worked as a Senior Policy Associate for the Organic Farming Research Foundation, advocating for policies to improve organic agriculture in the United States. Before that, he was the Deputy Director of Food Disclosure and Labeling at the United States Department of Agriculture. While there, he helped write regulations to implement the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (GMO labeling law). At USDA, he also worked on conservation programs, farm programs, farm loans, and crop insurance. Trevor received a Masters of Law (LLM) in Food and Agricultural Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law, a Juris Doctor (JD) from Willamette University College of Law, a Masters in Education from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from Willamette University. He is an active member of the Oregon State Bar.

Baylen Linnekin

Founder

Keep Food Legal Foundation

Baylen J. Linnekin is a licensed attorney and is the founder and executive director of Keep Food Legal Foundation, a Washington, DC-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that promotes food freedom of choice—the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods of their own choosing. He serves as an adjunct professor at George Mason University Law School and an adjunct faculty member at American University, where his teaching focuses largely on contemporary food-policy issues. Along with faculty from Harvard Law School, UCLA Law School, and elsewhere, Linnekin is one of six founding board members of the new Academy of Food Law & Policy. He is currently writing his first book, which focuses on the ways that government policies often thwart sustainable food practices, for Island Press. He is also serving as an expert witness in an ongoing First Amendment food-labeling lawsuit. Linnekin’s writings on Food Law & Policy, Constitutional Law, and Legal History have appeared in many scholarly publications and he writes a weekly food-law column for Reason magazine’s website and has authored opinion pieces that have been published by the New York Post, Baltimore Sun, Huffington Post, VICE, and many other publications. Linnekin earned an LL.M. in agricultural and food law from the University of Arkansas School of Law, a J.D. from Washington College of Law, an M.A. in learning sciences from Northwestern University, and a B.A. in sociology from American University. He lives in the Washington, DC area with his partner of more than two decades.

Uch├® Ewelukwa

Visiting Professor

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Professor Uché Ewelukwa is a professor of law at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she teaches in the international law and intellectual property fields. Professor Ewelukwa also teaches in the Law School’s LL.M. Program in Agriculture and Food Law. Professor Ewelukwa is an active member of the American Bar Association Section on International Law (ABA-SIL) and currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Committee on Investment & Development, the Vice-Chair of the International Intellectual Property Rights Committee, as well as the Vice-Chair of the Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility of the association. Professor Ewelukwa is also an active member of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Intellectual Property Interest Group and the Co-Chair of the Africa Interest Group of ASIL. Professor Ewelukwa is the Secretary General of the African Society of International Law.

Professor Ewelukwa is widely published. Her scholarship focuses particularly on international investment law and arbitration, business and human rights, China-Africa trade and investment relations, as well as the intersection of intellectual property law and human rights. Professor Ewelukwa’s articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, Michigan Journal of International Law, Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, University of Miami Law Review, Transnational Dispute Management, among others.

Professor Ewelukwa is on the Advisory Board of the African Journal of Legal Studies, is on the Editorial Board of Law Digest, Africa’s Premier Law Journal, and is part of the Editorial Team of the Africa International Legal Awareness Blog. For four years (2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014) she has served as the Editor of The Year In Review for the International Investment & Development Committee of the American Bar Association Section of International Law. She has also served as the Editor of The Year In Review for the Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility of the American Bar Association Section of International Law.

Professor Ewelukwa has received numerous awards and fellowships in recognition of her work. Past awards include: Outstanding 2014 Year-in-Review (YIR) Award from the American Bar Association Section of International Law (for the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee’s Year in Review that she edited and co-authored), the 2009 Human Rights Essay Award from the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, and a fellowship award from the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.