Akbar received her B.A. from Barnard College and her J.D. the University of Michigan, where she served as editor-in-chief of the Michigan Law Review. She clerked on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of N.Y., then practiced as a community services lawyers and taught human rights law while working in an immigration clinic for three years. Her pending publications are Radicalization, 3 U. C. Irvine L. Rev. ___ (2013), and “Muslim Fundamentalism” and “Human Rights in the Age of Terror and Empire” (with Rupal Oza), in Gender, National Security and Counter-Terrorism: Human Rights Perspectives (M. Satterthwaite & J. Huckerby eds.) ( Routledge 2013).