Rebecca Heller is a

lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...

specializing in

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

. She is known for her opposition to the

Trump travel ban The Trump travel ban (labeled the "Muslim ban" by critics) denotes a series of executive actions taken by Donald Trump as President of the United States. On January 20, 2021, newly-inaugurated president Joe Biden issued a proclamation revok ...

, and for her work providing legal assistance to

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

s through the

International Refugee Assistance Project The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) works to organize law students and lawyers to develop and enforce legal and human rights for refugees and displaced persons. It was originally a project of the Urban Justice Center in New York Cit ...

, which she co-founded and directs.

Education and career

Heller is the daughter of a

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and a

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

and she grew up in

Piedmont, California Piedmont is a small city located in Alameda County, California, United States, completely surrounded by the city of Oakland. Its residential population was 11,270 at the 2020 census. The name comes from the region of Piedmont in Italy, and it me ...

. She was a rebellious high school student, often skipping classes, competing for a different school's debate team, and graduating late because of a missed physical education requirement. She graduated from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

in 2005 and became a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

Malawi Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast ...

, working there on issues of

food policy Food policy is the area of public policy concerning how food is produced, processed, distributed, purchased, or provided. Food policies are designed to influence the operation of the food and agriculture system balanced with ensuring human health ...

. She earned her J.D. from

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by ''U ...

in 2010 and has worked as a visiting lecturer at Yale Law since 2010. Heller has a daughter.

Refugee assistance

Heller founded the International Refugee Assistance Project in 2008 as the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, after encountering Iraqi refugees on a side trip to Jordan during a summer internship in Israel, and learning of their need for legal assistance in obtaining resettlement. She calls herself "an intensely neurotic and self-critical Jew", and has likened the recent treatment of refugees from the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...

to the treatment received by Jewish refugees from

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

Recognition

While a student at Dartmouth, Heller won the Howard R. Swearer Student Humanitarian Award of Campus Compact for her work connecting a Vermont homeless shelter with leftover food supplies from local farms. Heller is a 2010

Echoing Green In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the list ...

Fellow. In 2016, Heller won the 2016

Charles Bronfman Charles Bronfman, (born June 27, 1931) is a Canadian-American businessman and philanthropist and is a member of the Canadian Jewish Bronfman family. With an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion (as of 2021), Bronfman was ranked by ''Forbes'' ...

Prize for distinguished humanitarian work by young Jews, for her work with the International Refugee Assistance Project. She was named ''

Foreign Policy A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...

'' Citizen Diplomat of the Year in 2017, and in the same year won the

David Carliner David Carliner ( – ) was an immigration, civil liberties, and civil rights lawyer in Washington, D.C. Among the earliest practitioners of American immigration and naturalization law, he was an early combatant of anti-miscegenation laws, challe ...

Public Interest Award of the

American Constitution Society The American Constitution Society (ACS) is a progressive legal organization. ACS was created as a counterweight to, and is modeled after, the Federalist Society, and is often described as its progressive counterpart. Founded in 2001 following t ...

. In 2018, she was given a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Heller has also been named one of the Christian Science Monitor's "30 under 30" change makers, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Heller, Becca Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American civil rights lawyers Jewish American attorneys Human rights lawyers Dartmouth College alumni MacArthur Fellows 21st-century American lawyers Yale Law School alumni Yale Law School faculty Women legal scholars 21st-century American women lawyers American women academics 21st-century American Jews