Ruhan Nagra

Ruhan Nagra is co-founder of the University Network for Human Rights. She is currently an Associate Professor and founding director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. Previously, Ruhan was director of the Environmental Justice Initiative and a Senior Clinical Supervisor at the University Network for Human Rights, where she worked with frontline communities in the United States and abroad to challenge environmental injustice. Ruhan has also been a clinical instructor at Stanford Law School’s Human Rights Clinic and a legal fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

In close partnership with directly affected communities and grassroots organizations fighting environmental racism, Ruhan brings an interdisciplinary approach to her work, which has included a peer-reviewed community health study in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, an analysis exposing racially discriminatory effects of an industrial buyout in Mossville, Louisiana, and litigation challenging the expansion of Liquefied Natural Gas infrastructure in Brooklyn, New York.

Ruhan has also lived and worked on human rights issues in the occupied Palestinian territory, including on environmental justice, freedom of movement and access, and the right to education. She is on the board of Tikkun Olam Productions, a documentary film nonprofit that highlights social justice issues through narrative storytelling and historical examination.

Ruhan’s work has been covered in major news outlets, including VICE, CBS Evening News, The Washington Post, Reuters, The Guardian, USA Today, Axios, Newsweek, and Democracy Now. Ruhan holds a JD from Stanford Law School and a BA in Human Biology from Brown University. She speaks Punjabi and Hindi.