Amna Akbar, Columbus, OH, is an Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University. Her research and teaching focus on social movements, critical theory, and policing, race, and inequality. Her scholarship explores the intersections of national security and criminal law, and the potential of social movements to transform our thinking about law, law enforcement, and law reform. She writes broadly for academic and popular audiences in outlets like NOMOS, Citizenship Studies, the Journal of Legal Education, Law and Political Economy, the Nation, Boston Review, and more. In her teaching and lawyering work, she is deeply engaged with law and organizing in Ohio and around the country.

Before coming to Ohio State, Akbar taught at New York University (NYU) Law School and the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School. She received her B.A. from Barnard College, Columbia University, and her J.D. from the University of Michigan, where she served as editor-in-chief of the Michigan Law Review. After law school, she clerked for Judge Gerard E. Lynch in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and worked as a staff attorney at Queens Legal Services Corp. in a community-based battered women’s project. She is a former Law and Public Affairs Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Princeton University.