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Goldsmiths Law funds 12 summer internships with leading human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith OBE – students will work on capital cases, torture and rendition

We are thrilled to announce the first of many annual summer internship programmes with Goldsmiths Distinguished Visiting Professor Clive Stafford Smith OBE.

The Department of Law will provide 12 x £500 scholarships to support the scheme.

We are grateful to Prof Stafford-Smith for volunteering his time and expertise with the aim of offering the unique opportunity to our students to work on a range of live projects relating to counter-terrorism and human rights.

We are very pleased with the diversity of the group of students who have successfully applied – ten of the twelve are BAME, and seven women. We also opened the process up to various other departments, reflecting Goldsmiths’ commitment to interdepartmental coordination. Two undergraduates are from the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies and one student is doing an MS in Filmmaking.

Clive’s ten-week internship includes students from Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford, Canterbury, Leicester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Queens College, so our students will work with their peers from other universities, some doing linguistics, some studying sociology. In addition, the Goldsmiths students with work alongside Clive’s apprentices from last year who are spending the summer in Alabama and Texas – the hope being that some of our cohort will follow in their footsteps to work on the ground in the US next summer.

The students will begin with a two-day introduction in Bristol on June 19-20, where Clive will run them through the various projects they will work on. For example, all the students will assemble a Case Theory Memo for a death penalty case where it seems likely that an innocent prisoner was executed, based on a review of the entire record that Clive has already laboriously assembled from several states. This means they will get to see an entire capital case from start to finish. It will ultimately lead to a film or a podcast, but only after a second year where – as with three of last year’s cases from Texas, and two from Alabama – students do the follow-up factual investigation.

Teenager Clinton Young is on death row

The students will also take part in factual and legal research for two clients still facing execution, and on June 19th, they will be able to speak directly to one (Clinton Young) to hear what it meant for a teenager to be sent to death row.

When it comes to the Guantánamo Bay clients, the advocacy is very broad. Several students have already volunteered to help Ahmed Rabbani (ISN 1461) with his Guantánamo Cook Book (and two of the 2022 students will be demonstrating some of Ahmed’s recipes at the introduction session). They will also be seeking to replicate Ahmed’s recent Karachi art show for Yemeni prisoner Khalid Qassim (ISN 242), another talented artist. And they will work on seeking compensation for the oldest Guantánamo prisoner, Saifullah Paracha (ISN 1094), an innocent Pakistani businessman who was kidnapped from Thailand.

Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui

They will also hear from Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui, the sister of Pakistani Dr. Aafia Siddiqui who is the only woman to suffer the US rendition-to-torture programme in the wake of 9/11. Clive recently took on her case, and several students have already indicated their interest in helping secure her justice – she was originally sold to the US for a $55,000 bounty, and abducted with  her three children from Karachi in 2003. Her youngest (Suleiman, an infant, right) was killed; her daughter Maryam (3) was forcibly fostered into an American family for 5 years; and her son Ahmed (5) was similarly held for half a decade. Aafia herself was taken to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan where she was subjected to torture. She is now facing 86 years in a federal prison in Texas.

A major academic project that will run through the summer, called Louisiana v. London, looks at the flaws in the contemporary UK legal system as they are reflected by the American Revolutionaries’ complaints in the US constitution and Bill of Rights. Some students will also work on ‘Constitutions’ for schools and universities that can help illuminate the benefits from a written structure.

Building on the recent ‘Generation on Trial’ project held at Goldsmiths, where Sir Nick Clegg was tried before a panel of Lewisham secondary students for the ‘crime’ of tripling student fees, the summer internship will help with the development of other ‘trials’ involving contemporary issues such as climate change, asylum seekers, and the monarchy.

Generation on Trial project: the trial of Sir Nick Clegg

Over the summer our students will have the opportunity to write, or make short social media films, on a range of legal and social science issues.

On each Tuesday of the ten-week programme, the students will assemble virtually or in person for an interactive lecture by Clive, or one of his guests, on a wide range of legal, advocacy and moral issues. If they wish, the students will also work one-on-one with Clive to identify their particular talents and passion, with a view to constructing as rewarding a career as he has had.

We hope that at the end of the summer the students will return to Goldsmiths fired up with knowledge and inspiration to continue their individual paths towards a life that is aimed at improving the lives of those around them.

Refugee Law Clinic gets “Best Contribution by Law School” award (LawWorks & Attorney General Awards)

As a founding member of the University of London’s Refugee Law Clinic, we are thrilled to announce that the Clinic was recently awarded Best Contribution by a Law School in the LawWorks and Attorney General Student Pro Bono Awards.

Goldsmiths Law sends 6 of its students to the Clinic every year. The students are selected through a competitive application process. Students spend a whole year with the Clinic (working part time, from home and in person). They are supervised there by the Clinic’s staff as well as by volunteer lawyers from Magic Circle law firm Clifford Chance LLP and internationally leading corporate law firm Macfarlanes LLP. As the Clinic is open to all University of London students, our students work alongside students from other leading UoL institutions: LSE, UCL, City, QMU, Birkbeck, King’s, Royal Holloway, London Business School and SOAS.

Lily, one of our third year LLB students, who participated in the Clinic’s activities this year, was amongst the students selected by the Clinic to attend the Law Works and Attorney General Awards ceremony. The ceremony took place at the House of Commons on Thursday 27th April and was supported by the Attorney General, the Rt Hon. Victoria Prentis KC MP. The Refugee Law Clinic was one of six shortlisted organisations competing for the award.

This is what Lily said about her her experience of volunteering at the clinic, and Awards night:

I feel very fortunate as the clinic kindly selected myself and one other lovely volunteer to join them at the ceremony in the House of Commons, and there were also many other worthy clinics which had travelled from all around the country, so it was extra special that we went home with something! You can see some coverage of it here.

My experience of volunteering at the UoL Refugee Law Clinic has not only allowed me to develop a strong understanding of refugee and immigration law – which is invaluable given the turbulent legal climate we currently find ourselves in – but it has also been a genuinely enjoyable and rewarding experience. Having such a collaborative environment and being able to work alongside highly experienced solicitors with such passion really transfers onto you, it really is a privilege to be able to learn from their expertise. Finally, I feel grateful to be able to interact directly with clients, particularly being able to meet face-to-face (especially after the last two years during the pandemic) is incredibly insightful, and it seems all too rare to have the chance to listen to their stories while not even having graduated from university yet.

I am currently working on my third case at the clinic, and each time there has been a huge amount of trust instilled between us and the client, allowing us not to merely ‘take over’ clients’ cases, but to work together in order to get them the fairest outcome. I have no doubt that this experience will be invaluable for my future role as a solicitor, and I am grateful both to Goldsmiths and Dr Dagmar Myslinska who recommended me for the role, and to the clinic for allowing me to contribute to championing social justice and human rights.

In terms of the ceremony itself, I am just beyond proud of the Clinic for winning the ‘best contribution by a law school’ as awarded by LawWorks. It is vital work being carried out at a time perhaps that asylum seekers are more under threat than ever. I feel lucky to have been able to contribute to this in some small way and I am sure this is the first of many well deserved awards for their work in assisting those who need it the most.

The Head of the Department, Professor Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos, added:

“We are very proud of the time that our students volunteer, and the invaluable contribution they are making, annually, to this critically important Clinic. We were with the Refugee Law Clinic at the very beginning of its journey, and I personally feel very privileged that we were given the opportunity to support it and help build it from scratch. We fully embed it in our LLB and LLM programmes at Goldsmiths, and look forward to continuing to see the fruits of its vital work for years to come”.