The Red Velvet Lawyer

The Semester  Again Ends I work here for one reason.  I love my students.   The young women here are getting the skills they need to serve as leaders in this quickly evolving country.  Those graduates with especially good English-language skills will find opportunities that open as Qatar plays an expanding role on the international stage.   They remind me of me when I graduated from law school in 1982, when only 8 percent of all lawyers in the U.S. were women. They will face many of the same challenges entering the legal profession here.  At the same time, they understand that the ongoing recognition of human rights in the country will support their career ambitions.  They have many great female role models to emulate.  We are close to ending the Fall 2017 semester.  I teach one of the skills courses QU College of Law offers: Legal Research & Writing I.  This required course serves as the first course in our Le...

Have we Reached the Tipping Point? After the Vegas shooting, I decided to research the charity groups working to reform gun laws.  Time passed.  I got busy.  My attention was drawn to other news. Sadly, this week in a Texas church, we had the second deadliest shooting this year.  Gun law reform is back in the news.  So, I am getting this post up so I can send it out every time we have another "mass" shooting.  Wikipedia is keeping a list of mass shootings in the US.  Update: The August 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas is the 249th shooting in 213 days of 2019.   August 3, 2019, in fact, had two mass shootings on that day, with total loss of life exceeding 30 people. I wrote this post after the good news for Democratic candidates across Virginia and other states in the November elections.  A Democratic candidate won running on a platform to end gun violence (after he had lost his girlfriend to gun violence) a...

Looking Back For some reason, several people recently began asking to see photos of me as a younger woman.  Perhaps because I am no longing hiding behind thick eyeglasses, people are looking at me differently. So, to satisfy this ongoing curiosity, here are some photos from my past.  I don't have many old ones in digital format. Just how far back do you want me to go? Mom and me.  1954 or 1955.  She was 18 or 19 years old.  We are posing in some rural part of Illinois.  Both my parents grew up in small towns. Dad got Mom off the farm and to the big city.  She loved it.  We always said she had lived a past life in San Francisco or New York. She had good taste and a designer's eye. She was a pretty woman. She also loved little kids.  Her most beautiful attribute was her loving heart. Here I am entertaining my younger brother, Greg. I was a tall three and a half year old with dishwater blond hair.  I still have those red cordur...

Commentary I am sharing a comment that first appeared in my Facebook feed written by my former colleague, Professor Joseph Carl Grant.  His bio appears at the end of this post.  I appreciate his point of view and his courage in conveying this powerful point of view.  I monitor all comments, so if you plan to say anything hateful in response, no one will ever see it.  My blog.  My rules. "I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts on Trump's criticism of NBA and NFL players.  This weekend I watched Trump's Huntsville, Alabama rally, tweets, and sporting events and commentary very closely and carefully. First, what really strikes me is the passion with which Trump, especially in the past couple of weeks, has gone after Jemele Hill, Stephen Curry, and the mostly African-American males in the NFL peacefully protesting racial inequality and injustice by kneeling during the National Anthem-the "S.O.B.'s" in Trump's lexicon.  The...

Pushing the Form I have now lived in Qatar for three fall seasons.  I teach at Qatar University College of Law, so I am perfectly positioned to see youthful fashion expressed in the abaya.   Many Westerners, when they see a photo of a group of Arab women wearing abayas, probably assume that the abayas they wear are the same in style, fabric, and embellishment.  Not true.  As the outward statement for these young women, you see many expressions of their personality and fashion sense in the abayas they choose to wear.  Some students, who view the abaya as a utilitarian piece of clothing, may wear the same abaya all semester.  Other women, more fashion conscious, may have four or five abayas that they rotate throughout the semester.   As a seamstress, I am fascinated at the thousands of interpretations of this basic form.  In Qatar, most abayas are cloaks with long sleeves that a woman wraps in front of her and holds with ...

The Future is so Bright, We Will have to Wear Shades One panel speaker, Assistant Professor Andrew Dahdal, had this to say about last week's ADR conference sponsored by Qatar University College of Law:     The conference was insightful in many respects. Given that some of my recent research has been looking at the relationship between financial centres and broader national jurisdictions, the discussion concerning the enforcement or arbitral awards in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) was especially interesting. The conference -- entitled,  The Future of Alternative Dispute Resolution -- A Qatari Perspective --  brought together lawyers, scholars, and ADR neutrals to discuss ADR in the Arab Gulf and MENA regions.  Most of the presentations focused on arbitration, which remains the dominant (and nearly exclusive) form of ADR in the region. The agenda included opening and keynote speeches by: Dr. Mohammed Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, De...

The Semester Comes to a Close I had hoped to post a blog every week of the semester about my experience teaching Legal Research & Writing 1 to my Arab students.  But, the semester gets so intense about Week 10 that I feel happy just to keep up with class prep and grading.   Over the past two weeks, I have conducted individual conferences with students. We look at their attendance record, the point scores on their assessments, their current ranking in the course, and the chance they have for a higher letter grade.  I then review their written work.  My female students met with me first.  All of them have been working hard this semester. They are dedicated to their studies and show it by good attendance, preparation for class, and a level of engagement that still surprises me.  After all, we meet from 3 to 4:45 p.m. at the end of a very long day.   I told them that coming to class is like looking out on the sunny, eager, upturned ...