Jim Silk
Jim Silk
Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic; and Director
Orville H. Schell
Jr. Center for International Human Rights
Jim Silk is the Binger Clinical Professor of Human Rights at Yale Law School, where he teaches the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and co-directs the Schell Center for International Human Rights. He is the director of Yale College’s Multidisciplinary Academic Program in Human Rights Studies, which he founded in 2014. In the 2015-16 academic year, Jim established and directed JUNCTURE: Explorations in Art and Human Rights, a year-long program that included an interdisciplinary graduate seminar, visiting artists collaborating with students on creative work, MFA travel fellowships, speakers, and a symposium. Jim was formerly director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington. He was, from 1999 until 2019, a founding board member of the Fair Labor Association, which promotes workers’ rights globally by monitoring compliance with labor standards in participating companies’ supply chains. Jim received the Yale Law Women Teaching Award in 2003. He received the M. Shanara Gilbert Human Rights Award from the Society of American Law Teachers in 2019. In spring 2009, he was the Bram Fischer Visiting Human Rights Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School in Johannesburg. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1989, Jim was an attorney at a Washington firm; his pro bono work included representing a Virginia death row inmate in his appeals. Before law school, he was editor, policy analyst and senior writer for the U.S. Committee for Refugees. He has a B.A. in economics from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in the humanities from the University of Chicago.