B.A., Macalester College; J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
Shana Tabak is a human rights lawyer and scholar with expertise in global migration & refugee law, human rights, climate, and gender justice. She is an Adjunct Professor of Human Rights at Georgetown Law and an Affiliated Scholar with the Institute for the Study of International Migration.
As Founding Executive Director of the Tahirih Justice Center Atlanta, Tabak built a nonprofit that became a leading voice on immigrant rights, detention, and asylum litigation, providing legal and social services to hundreds of immigrant survivors of gender-based violence. In this capacity, she co-chaired the Atlanta Mayor’s Council on Immigration and worked as a legal monitor in children’s detention centers on the U.S. / Mexico border.
Tabak has extensive human rights advocacy and strategic litigation experience before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, United Nations human rights mechanisms, and in U.S. court. As a clinical law professor, she led litigation at the International Human Rights Clinics at American University and George Washington University on LGBTI+ rights, climate justice, and refugee rights. She has lectured at Emory Law, Georgia State Law, the University of Georgia School of Law, Universidad de Antioquia, (Medellin, Colombia) and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Cali, Colombia).
Her work and commentary have been featured by The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters, CNN, HBO, NPR, and El País, among others.
Tabak holds a JD from Georgetown University with a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies, an LLM from George Washington University, and a BA (summa cum laude) from Macalester College. Tabak clerked on the International Court of Justice in the Hague and studied migration and international development in Bolivia as a Fulbright Scholar.