Why Does It Matter If Women Are Human: Catharine MacKinnon's Contributions to International Law

It is an honor for me to take part in this event and I thank the organizers for inviting me.Catharine MacKinnon is one of the law professors I admire most and I am proud to be among the legion of former students who have learned so much from her.She convinces me by example that there is no reason one cannot be an advocate and an academic at the same time, however frowned upon that may be by some of our colleagues.That theory matters not for its own sake but in the lives of real women and men.I That it is possible to be both erudite and relevant at the same time.She also forces me, in the healthiest way, to question every basic assumption that I make about what I do as a professor of international law and human rights by asking profound and destabilizing questions like, "are women human?"Before I describe what I see as the far-reaching ramifications for international law of asking such a seemingly simple question, I should perhaps start by explaining how I first met Professor MacKinnon.Being an Arab American international lawyer in these times means that much of my career has been shaped by polarizing events.My first year of law school at the University of Michigan, back in academic year 1990-91, witnessed the birth of the fleeting New World Order proclaimed by President George H.W. Bush.Hence, I spent much of my first year at demonstrations, teach-ins, and endless meetings as a student activist in the anti-war movement during the (depending on how you count it) first Gulf War.As a result of this work, I appeared twice on the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour to discuss opposition to the conflict among students and Arab Americans.Shortly thereafter, I began to receive a stream of bizarre, pornographic letters from a gentleman in Canada who was good enough to put his name and return address on each.These communiqu6s featured strange, explicit Orientalist fantasies, often involving veils and harems.They made me queasy, especially in the prevailing climate of heightened anti-Arab racism.They just kept arriving, appearing several times a week in my pendaflex in the law school basement.I went to the Ann Arbor police.I went to the federal postal inspector.I went

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